


Prompts and Ficlets

by hedera_helix



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:27:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14156709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedera_helix/pseuds/hedera_helix
Summary: Short eruri ficlets I've written and posted on tumblr. Some are based on prompts, some are the result of events and such.





	1. Prompt: "Just once."

**Author's Note:**

> An old prompt I finally got around to. 2700 words or thereabouts. Eruri, modern au, veterans of the Iraq war, nsfw, angst, pining, all that jazz.

That night beer tasted bitter, more so after every bottle emptied, near unbearable after the sixth. Some nights it was like that; his brain working against him, keeping him from getting to his favorite state of drunkenness where he could no longer tell which teams the players on the old tv behind the bar belonged to, or remember why he was drinking in the first place. Most Fridays he got a good fifteen minutes of that before it came back. That Friday he didn’t even get five; couldn’t have found a better reminder if he’d fucking tried.

Of all the gin joints.

The man looked older than he remembered which shouldn’t have come as a surprise after ten odd years. Still the kind of man who could take his pick of women at any bar he walked into. Slacks, the kind of shoes you couldn’t run in. A nice shirt. One sleeve held up by a pin over a stump left of his right arm.

It was a weird feeling then. Sadness mixed with relief. He wasn’t the only one – but gut-wrenching, that out of everyone, it had to be Erwin. They might as well call the rest of the troops back. They didn’t stand a chance now anyway.

Levi swayed between calling out to get the man’s attention and grabbing his jacket off the chair and slipping out the door. Such a stupid fucking impulse. He should say hello at least, after the hell they went through. The hell they got each other through – alive, if not in one piece. Not that he didn’t know what it was that made him want to run then. Not that he hadn’t known for ten odd years.

Levi waited until Erwin noticed him; guess he was a coward like that. He did his best to answer the man’s smile, but the expression didn’t feel right on his face, and died almost as soon as he managed to draw it on, and suddenly he wondered how long it had been since he’d last done that. Erwin’s smile was easier, lasted longer, suited his face. It seemed strange to Levi that once upon a time that expression had been the most fucking reassuring thing he could’ve seen. It’s not as bad as it seems. We’ll make it through this. We made it through. One more day of fight left.

Another reminder of better times, of days when death had been so near but never something he had craved for. Saner days; gun in hand, the fear of red mist never far once you’d got in a Humvee.

It felt wrong to have one of these conversations with Erwin, one that had to start with the compulsory questions. How long you been back? You hear about the others? Still see any of them? And the answers. Fuck, I hadn’t heard. Really thought he’d make it. No, you’re right. You never know. Really makes you think.

And Levi wouldn’t say it to Erwin, that it  _didn’t_ make him think, not of the things it was supposed to; the ‘that could’ve been me’ or the ‘guess I should be grateful I got out when I did’. Fuck all that. He’d go back tomorrow if they let him.

“How’s the wife?” Levi asked Erwin. Couldn’t help it, though he did notice the ring that used to be on Erwin’s finger wasn’t there anymore. He’d dreamt about biting that thing in half and spitting out the pieces, once.

“Better now,” Erwin told him with a quiet laugh, “after the divorce.”

“Sorry. I hadn’t heard,” Levi said but Erwin dismissed the comment.

“It’s fine,” he said, and really seemed to mean it. “It’s better this way, for the both of us.”

Levi nodded and the conversation fizzled out, until Erwin spoke again.

“You ever get married?”

Levi laughed under his breath and stared at his bottle of beer, thinking of what to say, finally settling on, “Not the marrying kind.” Hoping Erwin would get the hint – now, after ten odd fucking years.

“Guess it’s not for everyone,” Erwin said, letting out a sound between a hum and a laugh, and Levi wondered if he was thinking about his ex-wife then.

They talked about nothing special, nothing too personal, both knowing there were questions that could only be asked after a couple more beers. They danced around the subject by trashing the VA and talking politics, leaving the bar when Erwin suddenly suggested it; and perhaps he knew, just like Levi did, that the bar was too loud for the kind of stories they needed to share. They walked the couple blocks to Levi’s apartment where Erwin’s smile made Levi’s balance falter worse than all the beers he’d drunk that night – even worse than the pain in his ankle that he was doing his best to ignore; he didn’t want Erwin to see him walking with a limp.

“Very clean,” the man commented, and Levi knew he remembered. No one else ever had their shit as neatly organized or clean as he did.

“You can take the man out of the military,” he muttered, smiling when Erwin laughed.

Levi kept telling himself the heat pooling in the pit of his stomach was just the beer and not the sound of Erwin’s voice while they sat on his couch and drank. Didn’t need to be told he was lying to himself. Shit, it could’ve been a hundred years ago they last saw each other and he’d recognize it anywhere – recognize what it did to him, how every word forced more pressure in his groin. Like waking the fucking dead.

“How’s the leg?” Erwin finally asked after finishing the beer Levi had given him; he declined another. Levi couldn’t help the bitter laugh.

“Not good for much anything,” he told Erwin, scoffing when he glanced down at his ankle; a worthless collection of grafted ligaments and bones that had fixed themselves wrong, even after more surgeries and physical therapy than Levi had managed to keep track of. “Not anything useful anyway.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Erwin said. Levi couldn’t look at him then. The pity in his voice was bad enough.

“A couple years back I asked them if they could chop it off,” he confessed and laughed. “Figured I’d be better off with a prosthetic, not have the constant pain. Those fucking assholes told me as far as they were concerned, I was as good as I was ever going to be and sent me home, told me I’d have to get it done somewhere else if I wanted it bad enough. Like I could ever fucking afford a surgery like that on the shit living I make.”

The words tasted like bile – and no wonder, after all the time he’d spent holding them back. He didn’t even think to consider the stump that Erwin’s arm had turned into until he glanced at the man and started slurring out an apology.

“It’s alright,” the man assured him curtly. “Truth be told the PTSD is worse than the arm.”

Levi stared, distantly aware that he was supposed to say something, but not finding the words. It didn’t surprise him to hear that Erwin had it. At the start of it all it would’ve, when he’d never had a CO as skilled before, never had a CO he would’ve been glad to die saving. It had taken time to learn about the other Erwin; the one who worried, who had to be pulled out of his own head and out of his own guilt. In the end Levi would’ve died for either one – and he’d come fucking close more often than once. It didn’t seem right for those to be the best moments of his life.

“So you’re doing the counselling and all that?” he asked Erwin who nodded.

“Therapy, yeah.”

“Yeah, right,” Levi said, pausing to drink. “They tried to get me to do that shit too. To sit down with someone.”

“You didn’t want to?” Erwin asked, and Levi laughed again.

“Go to some stranger and talk to him about my problems?” he said and shook his head. “No fucking way. Wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“I get that it’s not for everyone,” Erwin told him after a moment, his voice hesitant, “but it really helps. Some things are better said out loud, even if it’s just to a stranger.”

Levi nodded along but didn’t pause to consider the man’s advice. He didn’t see how talking to someone would make him feel better about the fact he couldn’t remember when he’d stopped thinking of PT as physical training and started to think of it as physical therapy, and how even not knowing made him want to put a bullet in his fucking brain.

“Do you ever think about it?” Erwin suddenly asked him, making Levi glance up. “The war.”

Levi turned back to his bottle and shrugged. “I try not to,” he said, taking a swig to be able to ignore the stabbing pain in his chest.

“Do you ever regret it?”

“Regret what?” Levi asked back; the sudden anger felt better than the pain. What the fuck was he supposed to regret? The only meaningful thing he’d ever done in his miserable piece of shit life? Being there to make sure Erwin got to come back to live out his?

“I don’t know exactly,” Erwin confessed, sighing. “Fallujah. Baghdad. All of it.”

Levi stayed quiet for a while and wondered why even now those names didn’t make him think of gunshots and mortars and IEDs; why even now they made him think of Erwin. Only of Erwin.

“Like I said,” he muttered, “I try not to think about it.”

“Does that work for you?”

Levi scoffed bitterly and took another swig of beer. Did it work for him. What a fucking joke.

“You regret it then do you?” he asked back rather than answering the question and Erwin sighed again.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Sometimes. Some days I wish I’d never enlisted.”

Levi turned to look at the man, the anger now drowning out what was left of the dull ache, the words circling in his brain. Wished he hadn’t enlisted. What a load of bullshit.

“I don’t regret it,” Levi told Erwin without looking at him. “I’d go back there right now if I could. One of the reasons why I asked them to cut off my leg, so I could go back to active duty.”

Erwin fell quiet at that, like he was trying to think of something to say, and Levi wondered if he was trying to figure out a polite way to tell someone that wanting to get your leg amputated just so you could get back to a war zone was fucking insane.

“I suppose it would be better to focus on the things I don’t regret,” he finally said. Tone careful. Conciliatory.

“What don’t you regret?” Levi asked, teeth clenching when he saw Erwin smile.

“The friends I made. The family I built,” he replied. “It’s a unique experience. Even with how painful the loss is, I keep being grateful for that.”

Levi agreed in a grunt and allowed himself to think of the others then. It didn’t feel real, that Mike and Nan had died. Even now some part of him was expecting to run into one of them at a bar, just like this.

“I’ve thought about you sometimes,” Erwin said then, and Levi couldn’t help glancing up again, his heart suddenly firing like an MG in his chest. “I kept wondering how you experienced it. Don’t ask don’t tell.”

Levi stopped to stare, the bottle forgotten in his hand for a long moment until he turned to empty it and walked over to the fridge to get another. He couldn’t tell if his mind was thrown more by the beer or by Erwin’s words, and he stayed speechless when he sat back down on the couch. He could sense the man’s discomfort as the silence dragged on but couldn’t think of a way to break it.

Erwin knew. He’d known this whole fucking time.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered when Levi didn’t speak, sounding embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to offend–”

“You didn’t,” Levi finally managed, taking a few large gulps of his beer while Erwin laughed, sounding relieved.

“I thought maybe I misjudged the situation or–”

“You didn’t,” Levi said again, brain busy beating down the memories; how he used to think about Erwin; how he still thought about him; how he thought of no one else but him.

“The repeal got me thinking about it,” Erwin went on, and Levi still couldn’t turn to look at him. Couldn’t believe they were talking about this, and in such a casual fucking way. Like it was any other subject. Like it was something that didn’t really concern either one of them. “I kept wondering if I could’ve done more to… Or I don’t know, maybe you didn’t really need–”

“No, I didn’t need anything,” Levi told him curtly, taking a swig of beer. “Wouldn’t have changed anything. It would’ve still been what it was.”

“I suppose,” Erwin said and sighed. “I sometimes wondered if I should’ve done things differently, done more to keep my distance. But when you got discharged and didn’t keep in touch, I figured you must’ve moved on, and I thought maybe I had overplayed it in my head.”

The words made every muscle in Levi’s body tense up and suddenly he couldn’t feel his grip on the bottle of beer anymore. His heart was battering his ribs, the heavy, painful thumping building panic in his chest.

“I shouldn’t say this, but I feel like it contributed something to the divorce,” Erwin said and laughed quietly. “I think seeing how you were around me made me realize how my wife wasn’t.”

Suddenly pulling back from Erwin made Levi spill his beer; a reflex move, automatic, like a wild deer tangled in a barbed wire fence. Erwin’s hand shot up and caught a hold of his hoodie, pulled him back on the couch though he tried to fight it – wanted to and didn’t want to, but tried anyhow.

“Levi,” the man spoke, tightening his grip around Levi’s sleeve. “Levi, it’s okay. It’s not…”

Moving closer, Erwin caught Levi’s head between his hand and his forehead, pressing onto him; painful, the best kind of pain Levi had ever felt. It took him a few seconds to register the grip he had on the front of Erwin’s shirt; tight-fisted, like he was preparing to beat on him. He heard Erwin’s heavy breathing, could smell the alcohol on his breath. Saw the bright, delirious look in the man’s eyes and felt so desperate, so fucking pathetically desperate. Had to have this. Just once. Just fucking once.

The kisses felt like getting punched in the mouth and Levi left them fast, dropping down to his knees at Erwin’s feet, fingers already working on the buckle of the man’s belt. When Erwin’s hand came onto his, he swatted it away impatiently and kept unbuckling, unbuttoning, unzipping. Erwin’s cock was hard when he pulled it out and sucked it between his lips, groaning at the aching pressure of his own erection. He heard his name, a swear that was half a moan, and he took Erwin deeper, so deep he gagged and remembered all the filthy dreams he’d had, of Erwin pulling his hair and fucking his skull till he was choking and breathless. But the pressure in his throat was subsiding, the flesh in his mouth was growing soft along with the touch of Erwin’s hand on his hair; gentle, soothing, like a father calming an agitated child.

“Levi,” he whispered, his voice breaking before he cleared his throat. “Levi, I’m sorry, but I’m not…”

Levi let Erwin move on the couch, to pull his legs together and straighten himself out. His mind was empty. His body. His heart.

“I can’t do this with you,” Erwin told him. “Not this.”

When he closed the door behind himself, it made a bang like a gunshot; a familiar sound, but it twisted Levi’s stomach and had him running to the bathroom where he threw up in the sink before falling down on the floor, his ankle giving out under him in a second of searing pain. Levi lay his head against the cold tiles, wishing the floor was sand, wishing a hot wind would blow across the desert, burying what was left of him; the little that was left.


	2. Eruri Secret Santa 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An additional little canonverse hurt/comfort(?) ficlet I wrote for seitsensarvi whose secret santa I got to be this time around! Around 600 words.

It came down in a white swirl, in swathes of clean blankets that looked soft and inviting; a pretence of innocence and harmlessness, a potentially lethal deception. It covered the barracks’ yard and the ramparts, made the soldiers crossing the courtyards slip on their feet and hold onto each other to stay standing. A gust of wind picked it up here and there and carried it for a while to pile it along a wall or by the foot of the heavy stone plinth in the middle of the quadrangle.

Death.

Erwin could feel it in the snow and the cold, in the twilight dimness of the days. The world seemed buried and lost. Empty. The whole of creation lay somewhere underneath the frost and ice, strangled, drowned. Waiting.

It was his season, somehow.

Those who knew him would no doubt have disagreed. Winter was a time for sitting still, and Erwin himself knew it had never been one of his strengths. But there was something about the cold absence that felt familiar, something about the slashing wind as it hit his face that felt just and deserved. A yearly punishment, dependable and righteous, and one that allowed for a fraction of control; self-administered through time spent outdoors, through gripping the ice-cold handles of blades long enough to make the skin of your palms ready to blister and peel off your flesh.

Erwin watched it from his window for as long as time would allow before he returned to his desk; no less full of death, but there was no pleasure in this. The punishment had fallen on someone else again – and what a waste that was, Erwin thought, glancing behind himself at the window that now showed nothing but reflections. It made for a peaceful burial, the snow. Like being tucked into bed as a child, limbs heavy and mind already wandering. Surely there were worse ways to die.

The door went and Erwin hid his guilt in the glance he brought swiftly back to the papers on his desk. It was no one’s burden to bear but his – and it certainly wasn’t Levi’s. He caused the man enough worry as things stood.

“It’s freezing in here,” the man gave as a greeting that made Erwin give a flash of a crooked smile in return. “Why haven’t you lit the fire?”

“I think better in the cold,” Erwin told him, making his words sound more absent-minded than he really was; best keep Levi at a distance, keep him from seeing into his head right now. The man was growing more clever at that by the day.

The man tutted and sat down on the sofa – Erwin caught the movement when he threw one of his legs over the other – and started going through his own paperwork, reading through reports and filling the room with the soft rustling of sheets of parchment. The sound accompanied the scratching of Erwin’s pen as he wrote out his condolences, his cold and numbing hands a reminder of the punishment he was trying to bring into the room. The black smudge of Levi’s figure at the edge of his vision kept interrupting his thoughts, kept getting in the way of the swirls of white he was picturing in his mind; the crushing weight of snow piling on bodies, on his own chest, over his face; a crossroads of drowning and suffocating, barred breath, thoughts growing panicked, hands helplessly digging through the ice while your ears are ringing with the pain in your lungs, the ache in your body is–

“That’s it.” Levi’s voice carried over, steady and certain. “I’m lighting a fire.”

The warmth and light made shadows dance across the room – in the corners, further away.


	3. Prompt: "It's our secret."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A kid eruri ficlet for the eruri of the month prompt "It's our secret." Sort of a loose interpretation of the prompt but oh well. Around 3000 words. Cuteness and choir music in a 90s setting.

The voice poured out of the television set, breaking as it caught a bit of static, snaking its way through the sitting room into Levi’s ears. High, bright, enchanting, it wove its way into his brain and made him look up at the screen, where three rows of boys dressed in long white robes stood by the altar of a church, singing something about who knew what, probably Christmas and Jesus and some such thing. The picture changed quickly to a close-up, just a few seconds of the face of a boy not far from Levi’s age with blond hair and thick eyebrows, red lips forming a large ‘o’ as he sang, louder than the rest. Just a few seconds before the broadcasting company’s name came up and a soft voice of a woman moved on to announce some Christmas programming, the singing fading to nothing in the background before an insurance company’s commercial took over.

Levi kept staring at the screen, frowning at the strange tightening in his chest and pressing a hand on his own forehead to check if it was warm. He didn’t know what to make of it. He glanced at the comic book that lay open on the sofa in front of him, then back at the television set where everything was always the wrong colour, too red and too blue and too orange. He rubbed at his chest a little to make his heart go steady, trying to go back to his reading but catching himself trying to remember the song. It wasn’t until Kenny called him into the kitchen for tea that he forgot about it.

It happened again the next day.

It was a Saturday and he’d gotten up to watch the cartoons while Kenny was still asleep. He made himself a glass of chocolate milk and sat down in front of the telly, waiting for Captain Planet. The song seemed to catch him by his throat, leaving him breathless and angry – which was how he liked to feel instead of feeling scared – and making his heart thump in his chest so loudly he thought he might pass out. The boy’s face came on the screen, a few seconds of the eyes cast up toward the church’s ceiling, a few perfect moments of that trembling, soaring voice, and Levi’s hands shook so badly he spilled some chocolate milk on his pyjamas.

It was the most beautiful thing he had heard in his entire life.

Now, Levi wasn’t stupid. He knew you had to be the worst sort of goody two-shoes to sing in a choir, and he knew it was just about the least cool thing anyone could do. First off, you had to wear a dress to do it, even if you were a boy and second, you had to stay in after school for practice and anyone who wanted to spend more time at school was trying to suck up to the teacher, which was also not cool. So he knew, and he tried to rub the feeling out of his chest, tried scowling at the TV set when he cleaned up the few drops of chocolate milk off the carpet.

And still, all through Captain Planet, he waited for the commercials, and when he saw the boy again, he knew no amount of scowling would get him out of it. The voice was like something out of this world. It was like a lighthouse that tried to guide him somewhere perfect. A few flawless seconds, that curious face that went along with the song… It was all Levi needed, and never enough at the same time. He stayed in the whole day, glued to the screen through newscasts and talk shows and who knew what crap. He saw the boy five more times that day.

It took him until Tuesday to find the user manual of the VCR – couldn’t ask Kenny, not about something like this – and until Wednesday to find a tape; one of Kenny’s grown-up ones, and he’d hidden them really well this time. Levi didn’t watch it. He chose the time frame carefully, positioning himself in front of the telly with the remote from the second he got home from school, knowing he only had an hour before Kenny would be back as well. It took forty-two minutes, but he got it all on tape, from the first swelling note to the last dying one. He watched it seventeen times before he heard the keys in the lock. He hid the tape under his mattress, all the way in the middle so no one would find it. He watched it again a few times when Kenny had his bath in the evening.

Levi wondered about how it was possible, how anyone could sound like that, how anything could sound that perfect. He tried it for himself on Friday, recording his own singing on one of Kenny’s old The Clash cassettes. It sounded so horrible that when Kenny came home earlier than he’d expected, Levi panicked and pulled the tape out of the cassette, flushing it down the toilet and hiding the shell under his mattress again. When Kenny was asking after it a week later, Levi lied and told him he’d never seen it in his life.

It was clear that made Kenny suspicious – they’d listened to the tape together before – but it still took another month before he got caught. He must have been too caught up in the song or the wobbly image or the bright blue of the boy’s eyes – that you could only really see if you pressed your face up onto the screen and squinted – to hear Kenny coming in. When the man spoke up behind him, Levi turned around in a flash, the remote falling onto the carpet with a soft thud. Behind him, the commercial ran through to the end and switched into Kenny’s grown-up video.

Levi could feel all the colour draining from his face just like it did from Kenny’s. He watched his uncle frown as he picked up the remote and rewound the tape to the beginning, watching through the commercial they both knew shouldn’t be there. Levi thought Kenny would be angry, but in the end he only looked at Levi like he wanted to be but didn’t know what he should be most angry for. He took the tape and that was the worst of it. Levi guessed he didn’t know what to say to him about it, but he heard him explaining it to someone on the phone a few days later.

“I don’t know, Uri,” he said, sharpening the edge of his long knife. “The kid’s always been a creepy little shit, but this one takes the cake. What the fuck am I supposed to think about that? If they’d had that stuff when I was his age, I sure as shit wouldn’t have stolen it just to tape over the good stuff with some bloody choir boys.”

They kept quiet about it, but on Saturday Levi found a brand new empty tape on top of the VCR. He recorded the commercial on it ten times in a row. It was much easier to watch after that – he’d gotten sick of the rewinding – also because Kenny knew now, though Levi could feel the questions in the way his uncle looked at him. But as long as he kept his eyes on the boy, it didn’t bother him. Nothing bothered him when he looked at the boy.

It happened ten nights before his birthday and started out very strangely with Kenny telling him he ought to go have a bath after breakfast. Since he didn’t mind bathing, Levi did as he was told, frowning all the while when Kenny came in and started combing through Levi’s hair, parting it off the middle as if they were going to get a visit from the social worker. He told Levi to get dressed in his fancy clothes, but since Levi didn’t mind dressing nice, he did as Kenny told him, frowning when he clipped on his tie and muttered something about his sleeves being too short. Before they left the apartment, Kenny threw on his long winter coat and wide brimmed hat, mumbled something about Levi’s wellies not being posh enough and made sure his scarf was on straight. Levi didn’t ask him where they were going, knowing Kenny would tell him sooner or later.

They walked to the bus stop in the rain, sat behind a smelly old man and waited a long time before getting off all the way across the city. On the steps of the church Kenny kneeled in front of Levi, straightening his hat and glancing around himself.

“Listen, kid,” he said, pausing to yank on Levi’s clip-on tie as if that would make it look better. “This is our secret. Can’t have anyone knowing I’ve been up to something like this. Alright?”

Levi nodded, frowning a little but never asking Kenny why, guessing it must’ve been the wrong kind of church or something.

It was a scary kind of place, huge, with a high ceiling that arched at the top and a cross at the front with a sad-looking man hanging off it from his hands – Jesus, Levi knew that much. The rows of benches were full of people, almost all of them wearing black overcoats and white scarves. Levi looked at his bright blue wellies and walked faster when Kenny pushed him along to take a seat. He helped Levi shrug out of his coat but didn’t take off his, rolling his hat back and forth in his hands nervously. Levi kept craning his neck to see sad-Jesus, only looking away when he heard someone further down the bench calling Kenny Mr Ackerman.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Mr Harris was a social worker, he’d been around a lot when Levi’s mother died. “Are you a fan of choir music?”

“Nah, not me, no,” Kenny said at once, nodding at Levi. “It’s the kid. Thought he might like it.”

“I see,” Mr Harris said, turning to look past Kenny. “Hello, Levi. How are you?”

“I’m great,” Levi said, still remembering how Kenny told him always to say that to Mr Harris so he wouldn’t take Levi away to a really bad place. He turned back to crane over the heads of the people, but Mr Harris wasn’t done.

“You’ve got a birthday coming up, don’t you?” he asked, and Levi nodded. “See, I remembered. Christmas Day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Levi said, turning away again, listening absently when Kenny spoke again.

“That’s what I was thinking, you know,” he told Mr Harris. “Sort of a birthday or Christmas thing, this.”

“That’s wonderful,” Mr Harris said. “Well, I hope you both enjoy it.”

“Hah, well, I’m sure one of us will,” Kenny replied; Levi had just enough time to see Mr Harris’ confused expression before the sound of a door being opened somewhere hushed up the whole crowd.

They came in through the back, walking down the aisle singing. Levi turned around in his seat and got up onto his knees to see over the heads of the grown-ups. He could hear the boy before he could see him, his heart was beating so madly he thought it might explode until it stopped and skipped a beat when he caught the first sight of the blond hair. Levi watched him as he walked past slowly, singing something Levi didn’t understand but that went straight into his heart and grew around it.

For the whole of the concert, no one else existed, and when the boy sang the song from the commercial, Levi knew every beat, every up and down, every smallest second of it. The version off the telly was rubbish in comparison, rattling and whiney. This was nothing if not heaven, and Levi didn’t ever want to hear another sound ever again. At one point he thought he caught the boy looking at him and he drew his head down behind the two old ladies seated in front of him at once. When he looked up again, the boy was staring straight ahead, his white robes glowing in the light of the candles lit around the room. He was beautiful. Levi had never seen anyone so beautiful.

It was over far too soon – a few years too soon.

“Well, best get going,” Kenny told him as the people around them started drifting out of the church. “Don’t want to miss the bus.”

Levi nodded, following him up the aisle in the slow pace everyone else was keeping. He felt happy and sad at the same time and was just trying to figure out which one he felt more when they got to the lobby and a glimpse of white caught the corner of his eye. He turned to look, barely managing to grab a hold of Kenny’s sleeve when he saw him.

“Kenny,” he whispered, kicking his uncle in the shin when he kept walking. “Kenny, Kenny, it’s him.”

The man turned around slowly, following Levi’s gaze across the room where the boy was standing with his parents, pulling a thick woollen coat over a pair of slacks and a white collar shirt.

“You want to go over and say something?” Kenny asked Levi, who answered by vehemently shaking his head. “You sure? You’ll probably never get another chance, kid. You’d better take it.”

Levi kept shaking his head and staring at the boy, freezing on the spot when the boy turned around and looked right at him. He smiled, and Levi turned away, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow.

“Jesus Christ,” Kenny muttered, his unlit cigarette threatening to fall down from between his lips when he pulled Levi’s arm down. “Look. He’s just a normal kid, for fuck’s sake. Just go over and say–”

“Shit, shit, he’s walking over here, he’s walking–” Levi interrupted him, catching the boy drifting closer. “What do I do, Kenny? What do I–”

“Just talk to him, and I’ll wait for you by the door,” Kenny told him, shaking his head as he started walking toward the entrance with his pack of matches. “Don’t know what the hell’s gotten into you.”

Levi gritted his teeth as he watched the boy walk over and he was sure he’d never looked angrier in his life. Still the boy wore the biggest smile when he waved his hand and stepped in front of Levi.

“Hello,” he said; all Levi managed was a miniscule nod. “Did you like the concert?”

“Yes,” Levi muttered, staring at his wellies, only now noticing the black scuff marks on them.

“I’m glad you liked it,” the boy said now, bending down to catch Levi’s eye. “What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you?” Levi asked, pushing his hands into his pockets and drawing his head between his shoulders, listening as the boy umm’d.

“Nothing really,” he finally said. “I just thought… Maybe we could be friends?”

“Why?” Levi asked now. “I don’t even know you. I don’t even know your name.”

“Oh,” the boy muttered, falling quiet for a few seconds. “Well… It’s Erwin. So… Now you know.”

Levi wanted to say it didn’t mean he’d want to be the boy’s friend – it was always better to feel angry than scared – but when he glanced up at Erwin’s sad face he changed his mind and muttered, “Levi” instead.

“Nice to meet you, Levi,” Erwin said, falling quiet again for so long that Levi started looking around to see Kenny; he couldn’t think of anything at all to say.

“I think I should probably–” Levi started when he spotted Kenny’s hat above the crowd, but before he could finish Erwin had rushed to speak.

“Did you know it rains acid on Venus?”

Levi frowned and, remembering it from school, said, “Yeah, I did know that.”

“It’s really strong acid, too. Strong enough to burn through even your bones,” Erwin told him, still smiling just as widely as before.

“Best not go there then,” Levi muttered and Erwin laughed.

“You couldn’t. You’d die before you got to the surface, and even if you did get to the surface, you’d burn because it’s too hot. And you’d need a rocket ship.”

“Well I know that,” Levi snapped, not wanting Erwin to think he was stupid or something.

The boy simply smiled. “I’m sure you do,” he said, and then, “Do you have a phone?”

Levi had forgotten about how nervous he was when his anger took over, but now it all fell straight back into the pit of his stomach and he shook his head so strongly he was afraid it might fall off. Erwin looked a little disappointed.

“Oh,” he voiced. “Well do you have an address?”

“No,” Levi said, shaking his head again, hurrying to add, “I’ve got to go,” when he saw Erwin was about to talk.

He ran over to Kenny, his heart beating so fast it was hard to see straight. When he got to his uncle he yanked on his sleeve and made to leave, but the man held on to his arm and kept him from running down the church steps.

“What did he want?” Kenny asked him and he gritted his teeth.

“He asked me for my address,” Levi said, burying his hands in his pockets again.

“Well what did you say?”

“I said…” Levi started, looking at the tips of his wellies. “I said I didn’t have one.”

“Christ Almighty,” he could hear Kenny muttering somewhere above him before he dug into his pockets as well, pulling out an old receipt and a pen. He scribbled something down on it and pulled Levi’s hand out, thrusting the piece of paper into it. “There. Go run it over. And don’t take all day, I don’t want to miss the bus.”

Levi looked at the street name and numbers on the little piece of paper, then glanced over at the boy. It was the scariest thing he’d done since he came to live with Kenny, but he tried not to be angry when he handed Erwin the receipt.

“I’ll write to you really soon,” he told Levi, smiling. “Okay?”

“Kenny doesn’t want to miss the bus,” Levi said, waving his hand and running back to his uncle.

He got the letter a couple days later. He read it thirteen times and replied right afterwards, using his neatest handwriting. He hid the letter under his mattress, smiling whenever he heard it rustle as he drifted off to sleep.


	4. Prompt: "I almost lost you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost 5K. Fantasy au, shape shifting, forest... vibes. I don't know.

There had always been stories about the lake.

Some folks said it was a mirror, made by the vain god of the sky so he could look upon himself instead of at his wife. Others said in its bottom was a town just like theirs full of fish-people who would look at anyone who went in for a swim and laugh at their clumsy legs. Someone once said he’d seen one of them climbing out onto the moss-covered shore once, but he was a drunk and no one took anything he said seriously. Then there were those who said the lake was a door to the realm of the gods, and that anyone who drowned in it would be allowed to join their eternal feast. The ones who believed this were mainly young girls who found themselves in a difficult situation.

Levi knew the lake was nothing but water and muck and plants and fish shit. Even as he watched it, feeling every breeze that somehow left its surface untouched, he knew there was nothing special about it. Even during the moments when the real world and its reflection seemed to grow indistinguishable, blurring at their edges, Levi knew it was nothing but a lake. There were no fish-people. There were no eternal feasts with the gods.

There was nothing but him and his bow. There was nothing but the animals who came to the water to drink. Nothing but the wait, and the kill.

And lately, nothing but the Stag.

Levi had hunted the beast for months. Bigger than any one of its kind he’d ever seen, the Stag would feed him and his uncle for half the winter. It was healthy and strong, and smarter by half than Levi himself by the look of things. There were others who wanted to mount those enormous antlers on their walls, but Levi was determined to beat them to it. He’d been learning its ways. During the past weeks he’d slept outdoors more than in. He’d built himself a cot out of young willows and clay that he used to keep the rain and the cold. He’d rolled around in mud so he’d smell like the forest. And still his arrows had missed. Every single one.

Levi had spent three days by the lake now, lying in wait in the thickets, trying so hard to stay unmoving that all the different parts of his body had grown numb, each in turn. The Stag must’ve been quenching its thirst on some mountain streams for Levi hadn’t caught so much as a hint of that glossy brown hide anywhere near the water. He would have to go back to the house now; his supplies were all but gone, the only scrap of food he had left was the dry end-piece of a week-old loaf of bread. Muttering curses under his breath, Levi took one last look around the lake before crawling clumsily out of his hideout. At least the traps he’d set around the house had worked and caught something; he hated going home empty handed.

He woke his uncle when he entered, stomping the dried mud off his boots outside the door before stepping inside. Kenny looked at the two dead rabbits dangling from his hand and let out a throaty cackle.

“Still nothin’ but conies?”

Levi gritted his teeth and grunted, lifting the rabbits onto the table before sitting down to pull off his socks. Kenny laughed again.

“That stag is playin’ you for a fool, kid,” he said – as if Levi needed the reminder.

“I know,” he replied, groaning as he leaned his back against the chair and felt the ache in his muscles. “Something’s not right about that beast. It’s too smart. It’s not natural.”

“It’s a shitty huntsman who blames the prey,” Kenny reminded him. Levi couldn’t help but agree.

A month went by without a sign of the deer. On the eve of the third week Levi even ventured down into the village to hear the news – to hear if someone else had caught the prize after all – but he came back none the wiser. He mulled over his defeat as he wandered in the woods, guessing that the Stag must have moved on beyond his reach, somewhere where the grass grew higher and hunters were less abundant than good grazing lands. Levi started work on widening out their root cellar and gave his life a new purpose, if only for a little while. He only remembered the Stag when he went out to hunt, whenever his arrows missed their marks, whenever he had to crawl and curse his way through the brush to find them.

The winter came early and stayed for longer – colder, too, than most. It took Kenny a few weeks after solstice. Not wanting to burn his body, Levi kept him in the root cellar until the ground thawed enough for him to be buried. The mourning felt longer for it and when he finally could, Levi embraced the hard labour of digging up the earth and lowering his uncle’s coffin into the grave. When he next went down to the village, the butcher’s wife gave him a whole hog’s head along with her condolences. Levi could barely finish off the meat; he was too used to having two mouths to feed, he had more food than he knew what to do with. He traded some of it in town for some black tea; Kenny had taught him to see opportunity in every misfortune.

It was then that the Stag suddenly reappeared, walking out to the edge of the lake bold as brass one morning when Levi was out fishing, as if it knew he didn’t have his bow with him. It looked at him with black eyes before bending its head to drink, the enormous antlers drawing shadows on the water, becoming one with the mirrored branches of the nearby trees. Levi could do little but stare, to measure the beast with his eyes. It had to be near twenty hands high to its withers. Its hide had lost none of its lustre over the crueller months. The damned thing looked like it had eaten better than Levi had. He watched as the Stag raised its head again, staring right back at him like somehow it knew what he was thinking – like somehow it knew more about him than anyone had ever done before. Then it turned away and disappeared beyond the fringe of the trees, slowly, like fearing nothing from Levi, or from anyone else. It was only then that Levi thought what a shame it would be to bring down something as beautiful as the Stag for something as mundane as meat, when just looking at it made his heart race in his chest.

But Kenny had taught him better than to grow sentimental. Meat was meat, no matter how impressive a beast it came from. The hide would keep him warmer this winter, the bones could be made into spoons and arrowheads. Whatever he had left over he could sell in the nearby town, and use the money to buy himself more tea, a bigger wash basin, a new pair of boots. He could prove himself now – to himself, since no one else was around to witness his triumph.

He resumed the hunt with renewed vigour, casting aside his routine of tending to the graves of his mother and Kenny which had started to make him feel less and less the more often he did it. He fixed up his bow and traded Kenny’s old coat for a butchered goose so he could make a score of new arrows. He went out into the forest with every piece of knowledge Kenny had ever imparted to him – and came back every night with nothing at all to show for it.

It was near midnight on midsummer’s eve when Levi’s hard work finally awarded him with a glimpse of the Stag, a silver shadow against the dark of the trees, its hide painted by the glow of the half-moon. Not trusting his eyes in the dark, Levi decided to follow it, keeping the grip on his bow loose as he focused on his feet in the dew-laden grass. The deer was ahead of him, making its way slowly deeper into the forest. Levi lost the trail a half-mile before the lake but made his way to the clearing nonetheless, hoping to catch the beast as it came to drink. And sure enough, once the moon had risen to its zenith and its beams had turned the lake into a mirror of glass, the Stag walked out of the forest, proud head high, ears showing its wariness. Levi followed it with his gaze and tightened his hold on the polished wood of his bow, fitting the arrow in place. He thought about Kenny then. Took aim, and breathed. Watched the Stag bending its head toward the water, watched the moonlight skipping on the ripples now set in motion. He would pierce the deer’s heart. He would finish what he started. He would end the hunt.

But before his eyes, the Stag was changing.

The heavy, branch-like antlers were disappearing. The long legs were growing shorter and the hide was turning golden. The large, black eyes that had stared into Levi’s soul before were becoming bright blue, like the sky above the lake on those sweltering summer days. As Levi watched, the deer vanished, changed shape, grew smaller and lighter and stood upright. When it was all done, a man was standing where the beast had been before, knee-deep in the cool waters. Strong. Beautiful. He bent over, dipping his arms in the lake, making moonshine rain down around him. Levi’s hand near released the arrow, it had grown so unfeeling. There was a sharp pleasure in his heart, a piece that acknowledged the beauty of it, this miracle of changing shapes. But stronger than that were the waves of terror. They made him grasp his bow and stand, rustling the brush. The man in the lake turned, looked over the moonlit clearing at Levi, seeing the weapon in his hand. His gaze moved, their eyes met, and Levi started running. He didn’t stop until he was back at the cottage, door bolted – but no lock and key could keep out the blue of those eyes.

He slept little and fitfully, thinking about stories of the lake, wondering whether now he had no choice but to believe them. That man could be nothing but a god, about to return to his home through the still, watery depths, to feast with his kind in some eternal realm. And Levi had aimed his arrow at him. He had threatened to kill a god. That couldn’t be good – especially if it was the vengeful type. Levi had to get up to check his locks and latches three times to get any peace of mind. After that he realised an ordinary lock was not likely to hold back a god, and he stayed awake for the rest of the night.

It took him a few days to settle back to his own life. He didn’t dare go into the forest – no further than to the traps he’d laid around the house. He hid his bow in the woodshed but then took it out again, thinking it better to have some protection than to have none at all. He dreamt of the Stag at night, of the transformation, of the god’s body that looked like polished silver in the moonlight. When he woke he yearned to go back to the lake, grew desperate to resume the hunt for another glimpse of that divine being, but his better sense always stopped him.

Days went by and no god turned up at the house seeking vengeance. After a while, Levi allowed himself to grow less wary, even venturing into the woods to take down a deer; a lesser cousin of the god, perhaps, and Levi kept glancing over his shoulder while he gutted and skinned it. Later that day while he was eating a bowl of turnip soup, he heard a sound that made his heart race in his chest: the heavy thumping of footsteps walking up the stone steps to his door. Levi grabbed his bow without hesitation, sneaking lightly across the room to the entrance, where a strange scratching reached his ears through the old wood. He held his bow at the ready when he reached for the latch, nearly falling over when the door opened inward and brought someone with it.

The god.

An arrow had pierced his arm and fresh blood covered the right side of his body. He was naked as the day he was born – if gods were born in the same way mortals were – and he was staring up at Levi, blue eyes pleading and filled with fear. Only then Levi recognised the baying of the hounds that made the forest ring around the house.

“Help me,” the god gasped, fainting as he fell onto the floor.

Levi didn’t lose a moment in wrapping his arms around the god and pulling him into the house; the hounds were getting nearer. It was his chance to settle the score, the lift the wrath of a god off his shoulders – who wouldn’t take the opportunity? He dragged the god into the room Kenny had once slept in and returned to the door to listen for the hunters. They didn’t appear; either the dogs had lost the scent, or the memory of Kenny was still strong enough to keep out anyone who hadn’t been invited.

Quickly, Levi turned his attention back to the wounded god. He tended to his injury and washed the blood off him before laying him down on the bed. He never woke, but his breathing grew faster with the pain he felt while Levi was working on his wound. Afterwards he fell asleep, and stayed that way long into the next day. Levi sat by his side, mending all the clothes in the house that needed it. Levi didn’t know to look for signs of fever in a god, and only took notice of the layer of sweat on his skin some time past midnight. Levi fetched some water from the well and placed a cooling cloth on his forehead. The god opened his eyes for a moment, unfocused and grateful, before closing them again.

The next day, Levi got him to eat a little – a broth he made out of vegetables, thinking the god might take offense at being offered the flesh of a deer. They didn’t speak much; Levi’s tongue was frozen from fear, and the god seemed too hurt to speak. Levi brewed him some camomile tea to calm him to sleep again, though in truth the man barely needed it. While he slept, Levi dragged a soft, padded armchair into the room and lit a fire in the hearth, dozing off in between keeping an eye on the god and changing the cooling cloth on his forehead whenever it grew too warm. He redressed the wounds morning and night, waking the god who shuddered from the pain.

“Thank you,” he said in a rough whisper, smiling when Levi nodded mutely.

The few days this lasted, Levi forgot about the crops he was growing, – he barely managed to save them at the end of the week – as well as about the traps he’d laid out. He barely remembered to sweep the floors. Whenever he wasn’t treating the god, Levi found himself watching him: the steady rising and falling of his broad chest, the fluttering of his long lashes when he dreamed, the frowns that came to line his face whenever he felt a sting of pain. Whenever Levi helped him, the god remember to say a quiet thank you; Levi hadn’t expected gods to be so polite. He never managed to say anything back, until one evening he could no longer hold his tongue about a question that had been bothering him since the god showed up at his door.

“I didn’t think a god could bleed so much.”

The man on the bed wore his deepest frown yet. “Excuse me?” he asked, grunting quietly when Levi wound the bandage off his arm.

“I didn’t think…” Levi started again, meeting the confusion in those blue eyes for a few seconds. “I don’t mean any offense or anything. I just… wasn’t expecting it from a god.”

The god stayed quiet for a moment before barking out a laugh that ended in another grunt of pain. “I don’t wish to disappoint you,” he started, still smiling, “but I’m not a god.”

Levi felt himself growing just as confused as the god had looked mere seconds ago. “Oh,” he said, falling quiet when he didn’t know how to continue.

“I understand my… ability may lead you to think it,” the man went on, “and in truth its origin is not of this world. But I wasn’t born with it – nor with immortality.”

Levi nodded slowly in the silence that lingered between them, circling the boiled and dried bandage around the wound. He’d have thought it would be easier to talk to the stranger knowing he wasn’t a god, but Levi still found his words faltering. He thought about that moonlit night again, of that unnatural and captivating transformation, and the thought it the reason why the man on the bed still didn’t feel human, despite his injuries, those obvious signs of vulnerability.

“I wish you to know I am very grateful,” the man told him now. “You saved my life. It’s a debt I’ll be hard pressed to pay.”

Levi snorted. “If anything, this is my chance to repay you,” he said. “I tried to take your life. It’s only just that I should attempt to save it.”

The man smiled again. “Perhaps we’ll agree neither of us owes the other anything,” he said, “though I don’t want to be any trouble to…”

“You’re not,” Levi hurried to tell him. “You’ll stay as long as you need. There’s nothing more to that.”

“Thank you – again,” the man said. “You are truly kind-hearted.”

Levi felt his cheeks growing warm as he stood up with barely a grunt of acknowledgement to the other’s words. “You should get some rest,” he told the man, gathering up the blood-stained bandages. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to eat.”

“I’ll gladly take your advice,” the man said, laughing quietly; Levi was already at the door when he spoke up again. “What is your name?”

“Levi.”

The man nodded. “My name is Erwin,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Levi.”

He nodded a response and left the room, turning the name over in his mind.

Erwin’s fever lifted within a few days and the wound on his arm healed better than Levi could’ve hoped. His appetite grew along with his health, and Levi got into the habit of sharing his meals with him, alternating between comfortable silences and quiet conversations. Erwin turned out to be soft-spoken and gentle, proving how well suited his other form was. Sometimes Levi wondered how it had come about, but he thought it impolite to ask. He found Erwin some of Kenny’s old clothes to wear. When Levi told him about his uncle’s passing, Erwin’s condolences were among the most sincere Levi had heard.

“Death can hurt us all so deeply,” he said with some distant pain in his eyes. “I hope your loss never becomes too much for you to bear.”

“It is what it is,” Levi told him, shrugging. “My uncle had a decent life – longer than most. In the end, none of us are here to stay. It’s as simple as that.”

At these words Erwin looked at Levi, frowning like he had said something outlandish; an expression that softened quickly to a smile, though his brow was still furrowed.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I suppose you’re right.”

They finished their meals in silence, and in the absence of speech Levi noticed how much he enjoyed stealing glances at Erwin, how much pleasure he obtained from looking at his face and body. The feeling was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. At night he lay awake in his bed, thinking about that fated night, of Erwin diving into the depths of the lake, his strong body visible through the clear water. The urges that awoke in Levi then were things which throughout his life he had failed to understand in other people: the secret desires of the body and heart that made mute the voice of reason on which he had always relied.

He began to long for that tenderness of the man, waited all day to hear him speak a few thoughtful words in his low and pleasant voice. Soon he could no longer hide his long looks, or how his hands lingered when he was changing Erwin’s bandage. He expected these things to be met with a silent pity that would make him ache worse than any harsh rejection. Instead Erwin seemed to hunt for his gaze, asked to spend more time with him once he was well enough to walk, even needlessly brushed his hand against Levi’s whenever he could. After two weeks, Erwin stopped asking Levi if he was sure he hadn’t outstayed his welcome, if he was sure he wasn’t being too much trouble, if he was sure he wasn’t too much of a strain on his crops and traps. He insisted on helping in the garden, of accompanying Levi to hunting trips, even if he never held a bow himself. Levi was surprised to see how quickly he grew used to sharing his home, to the point where – as weeks went by – it began to feel less his and more theirs.

One evening they were sitting by the lake, looking across the still water at the furthest shore where the setting sun forced shadows on the trees, which rose black against the lavender hues of the clouds, their reflection deceiving the eyes and the mind. There was a lull in their conversation, and somehow Levi knew Erwin was also thinking about that first night they met, and when the man finally spoke, Levi wasn’t surprised by his words. What he found more curious was the strange look on Erwin’s face.

“Do you remember when I told you that my ability isn’t something I was born with?”

“You said it isn’t of this world,” Levi said, watching Erwin whose eyes never strayed from the lake.

“There was a time when I used to sit by this lake,” Erwin began after a moment of silence. “Years ago, I used to look at it, but I found no beauty in the sight. The water meant something else to me then – something I’ve since come to dread.”

Levi keeps quiet when Erwin stops, letting him continue in his own pace, never looking away even when the pain in Erwin’s eyes became difficult to bear.

“I’ve never told you about my father.”

It wasn’t a question, but Levi shook his head. They’d both spoken of their lives, Levi had told Erwin of the village where he was born, of his mother, of all the things Kenny had taught him. Erwin had talked about his life too, about the years he had spent fighting for the king, about the weight of the dead he carried on his shoulders. But neither had ever mentioned their fathers – though Levi’s excuse was that there was nothing to tell.

“My father was a good man,” Erwin finally said. “He had a good heart – just like you. He always wanted what was best for others, and what was best for my mother and me.”

“What happened to him?” Levi asked in a whisper, frowning at the sadness that flooded Erwin’s features.

“There was an accident,” the man told him quietly. “For a long time I didn’t understand that’s what it was. I felt responsible for it, for the way he died. I felt it was my fault, even though I was just a child – or maybe because I was.”

“I’m sure there was nothing you could’ve done,” Levi whispered.

“I used to come to the lake afterwards,” Erwin continued, like he hadn’t really heard Levi. “Whenever my mother was beside herself with grief, I used to come here to look at the water. I imagined myself drowning in it. After a while I imagined it even when I wasn’t here.”

Levi could feel a shudder running down his spine. Suddenly the lake seemed darker than it had before.

“In the end it became too tempting,” Erwin said. “Even now I remember it all so clearly. The weight of the stones in my pockets. How cold the water was. How heavy my clothes grew, and how weak my limbs were. Those last seconds of panic, the burning in my lungs.”

Levi had never known such sadness. Nothing had ever made his breath catch so painfully, nor his heart beat so fast from pain. He felt like reaching out to Erwin, but at the same time like his hands had grown into blocks of wood, heavy and useless.

“I remember being cradled in strong, gentle arms,” Erwin went on. “I remember a quiet voice singing in my ear as I grew weightless, surrounded by light. I woke up on the grass and she was standing beside me. I cried when she told me I hadn’t died. I asked her why she hadn’t let me drown, but she gave no answer. When I begged her to leave me be, to let me become nothing, to let me become anything except the murderer I was, she took pity on me and gave me the gift of changing my form.”

In a flash Levi remembered the stories of the lake and shuddered, feeling relief filling his chest. There could be a thousand gods living in the bottom for all he cared. He’d build an altar for them – no, a temple – and bring sacrifices every day, valuable things: tea, soap, his best weapons.

“She told me my story wasn’t over,” Erwin said. “She said there were people I would need to save. I became a soldier for it. And I did save lives, though I couldn’t save them all. Whenever my guilt would threaten to overwhelm me, I would escape into the woods, have a moment of peace. But lately I’ve thought about what you said.”

“What I said?”

“That none of us are here to stay,” Erwin explained, turning finally to Levi. “That it’s as simple as that.”

Levi frowned, remembering the words only vaguely and finding them foreign. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve thought that for as long as I can remember. But now I’m not so sure.”

“What’s changed?” Erwin asked him, and Levi wished he wasn’t imagining the note of hope in his tone.

“I know in this world no being can own another,” he said, keeping his eyes on the lake, “but hearing your story I can’t help thinking… I almost lost you.”

The moment of silence that followed was the most nervous Levi remembered being. Finally Erwin laughed quietly.

“Maybe you’re right, maybe no one can own anyone else,” he said, “but if you can, I wouldn’t mind being yours.”

That night they crossed that final threshold, there on the soft grass in the light of the half-moon that climbed over the trees. It was everything Levi had thought he’d never want, and so many things he could never have imagined. Erwin’s voice was pure, like the water. His body was steel and earth. He spoke Levi’s name, and it sounded like a breeze caressing the ripples that rose on the lake. And when the night grew old they walked back to the house, falling asleep in each other’s arms.

In a dream, the goddess came to him. In a dream, his mother came, rising out of the water.

“Don’t hurry your end, Levi,” she said. “Love the gift I have given you both.”

And in their home, pain was but a fleeting thing easily conquered by joy.  


	5. Prompt: "It could be worse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Around 1000 words. Modern au. ??? I don't know.

He found Levi in a fighting pit, grinning through a mouthful of blood, grinning all the way through the match and frowning as soon as it ended. When the announcer raised his hand in the air as a sign of victory, Levi spat a red smear onto the floor by his feet before walking off, unwinding the soaked bandage from around his bare knuckles; as if winning was something he’d never considered for a second. His prize money came in a large, brown envelope. From his seat by the bar, Erwin saw him count the bills within it quickly before he folded it all up and pushed it into his pocket. Erwin stopped him on his way out, asked if he could buy him a drink. Everything about Levi, from the way he sat at the edge of his seat to the way he ordered his own drink, felt designed to let Erwin know he had barely accepted, and even that a little grudgingly. They drank mostly in silence. Erwin memorised all the scars on Levi’s body he could see.

He came back the next weekend. Levi fought two matches and won both, though the outcome seemed to interest him even less now than it had done before. The first time should have taught Erwin not to flinch when Levi took a punch, when he leaned onto the ropes in between rounds as if they were the only thing holding him up or when, for mere seconds, Levi allowed himself to get backed into a corner. No one could hold him there. No one could land a hit well enough to take him down.

They called him unbeatable.

That night he bought Erwin a drink, the kind he’d had the previous time. Erwin could see him wincing with every mouthful of the hard liquor.

“You’re hurting,” he observed, but Levi merely shrugged.

“Could be worse,” he said, nodding at Erwin’s empty glass. “Another?”

They left the bar together, going back to Erwin’s shoe-box apartment. Levi had sneered at the invitation, like the very idea of intimacy was something laughable, like he wanted Erwin to know he didn’t usually bother himself with it. Still, under Erwin’s touch he softened, his sneers turned into soft breathing and nearly voiceless moans – gentle reminders of life. Like all it took to expel those years of fighting were Erwin’s careful touches, his half-spoken words. It was unexpected. Intoxicating. Overwhelming.

He couldn’t usually sleep next to someone else back home, but when Levi’s breathing turned steady against his arm, Erwin felt himself relaxing, his body growing heavy, his mind growing numb. When he woke up, Levi was gone.

But Erwin already knew.

He went back to the bar a week later, and the week after that, growing more desperate as his time ran out. He tasked the owner with telling Levi his deployment was coming up, left his number on a post-it on the notice board in the man’s office. He answered every unknown number, took his frustration out on the telemarketers. Levi never called.

The war was how he’d left it. He lost a man to a sniper on an operation that was supposed to be as standard as standard gets. He lost another two when his convoy hit an IED half a hundred klicks off the valley. Nothing he could have done, but he took the guilt back home with him. Tried to drink it away, but couldn’t. Tried to work the thoughts out of himself, but couldn’t. Tried to lose them in embraces and soft soothing touches, but couldn’t sleep for a second with another person’s warmth in the bed.

Only Levi calmed him. Only for one night, and then he was gone again. Compared to before, Levi left behind an abundance: stories of his life, his mother’s name, an introduction to every scar. He was generous both in what he gave and what he took: the day Erwin’s father died, the day he joined the army, a shred of the guilt he carried on his shoulders. They both found how they were the same, and how they weren’t. They both confessed to that feeling of strange familiarity, a fated connection, a peace they found only with each other. It was only a glimpse of reassurance that the thoughts that had hunted Erwin in that warmer climate were real, not born from fear or loneliness.

But all Erwin needed was a glimpse.

He shirked his duties to spend more time at the bar, eyes darting to the door again and again, heart sinking whenever it was time to go home. The man who organised the matches repeated a rumour that Levi’s uncle had come to town and drawn his nephew into whatever shady business he was cooking up now. The man wasn’t worried for Levi, just mourning the revenue he brought in, but Erwin grew alarmed, tried asking after both Levi and his uncle from then on, but found neither of them. His mother asked to drive him to the airport; he took a taxi from the bar instead.

He found Levi when he came back, sitting behind a sheet of plexiglass wearing an orange jumpsuit, his hair falling over his ear when he picked up the receiver. He barely glanced at the stump that Erwin’s arm had turned into, like there was nothing to it, like it didn’t really interest him. When Erwin asked him how he was, he shrugged and sneered.

“Could be worse,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Where’d you leave your arm?”

“Our Chinook got hit by an RPG,” Erwin explained in a monotone. “In the end there wasn’t enough left of the arm to work with.”

Levi took a moment before muttering, “Close call?”

“Very,” Erwin said, thinking he could see Levi shudder.

“Not that I can do much anything from here,” he muttered into the receiver, “but I’m glad you didn’t die. For what it’s worth.”

Right then, Erwin would’ve given his right arm just to touch Levi. Right then, he would’ve gotten back on that Chinook, knowing what would happen, just to kiss him. Anything for feeling Levi’s breath against his arm. Anything for his middle name, for his date of birth, for the story of his first love.

A week later, Erwin robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. A month later, Levi’s lips were on him.


	6. Prompt: "It's not what it looks like."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt sent by the wonderful birbwin! About 2000 words, modern au. Jogging. Inspired by True Events. Kinda.

Erwin adjusts the brightness on his smartphone, trying to shield the screen from the sun as he peers down at it to see the map, finally making out the blue circle that’s supposed to be him. He glances around himself at the patch of forest; the trail cuts through it neatly, forming a circle around a small pond. Erwin is still astounded that such a place exists so close to the city, and it makes him wonder whether he would have picked this up sooner if he’d known about it. He takes a deep breath, appreciating the cool autumn air for a second before turning back to his phone and pressing the button below the map.

“This is a low intensity workout,” the voice of a young man announces. “Try running at a slower, steadier pace.”

Erwin glances behind himself, relieved to see no one else has chosen to get up this early on a Sunday. He fiddles with the zipper of his hoodie, pulling it down before reconsidering and pulling it back up. He takes a few tentative steps forward and presses start.

“Get ready for two hundred metres.”

_Oh, no warmup._

Erwin frowns at his phone, listening to the countdown that for some inexplicable reason makes him feel extremely nervous. For a moment he wonders whether he should cancel the workout, do a little warmup and start again, but when he hears the young man telling him to run, he jumps into motion instead. By the time the app tells him he’s run the first fifty metres, Erwin feels out of breath. He slows down his pace for the remainder of the interval, stopping dead on his tracks and gasping for breath as soon as the male voice tells him he can.

“Don’t stand still between the intervals. Keep walking.”

Erwin looks at his phone and frowns, straightening his body and starting to walk along the track. It doesn’t occur to him to hurry; the morning is glorious, the sun just risen to paint the autumn leaves golden with its first rays. Looking past the trees, Erwin can spot a few ducks on the pond. There’s a calmness he appreciates, a contrast to the hectic week he’s had that makes him think taking some time for himself like this might not have been such a desperate plan after all.

“Get ready for two hundred metres.”

The command takes Erwin by surprise and he remembers again what he came here to do. Suddenly it all reminds him of his days at university, how he’d get up early to go run a quick 5k before lectures. He can still recall the resentful glares he used to get from his friends who tottered onto their seats thirty seconds before the start with their mugs of coffee and Red Bull, glowering at his smoothie-to-go from behind their sunglasses. He felt so good back then, he can’t remember ever having been as exhausted before six pm as he is almost every day now. Of course age has a lot to do with it, and Erwin knows very well he is no spring chicken, but capturing even the faint shadow of the strength his body used to hold then seems like a dream worth pursuing.

He runs the interval at a comfortable pace, keeping track of his breathing this time and finding he’s much less winded than he was after finishing the first. The trail is a good surface for running, and Erwin’s glad to find the pretty penny he paid for his new running shoes clearly didn’t go to waste either. As he walks along he even begins to smile, straightening his posture and adding speed without even realising it. He keeps reminiscing, thinking about the messy buns Marie used to fashion on top of her head when they’d run together.

“Get ready for one thousand metres.”

Erwin’s smile turns quickly into a frown. Did he just say one  _thousand_ metres? Surely he misheard, it must have been one hundred. The app wouldn’t have him run a whole kilometre during his first workout. By the time the countdown is complete, Erwin is calm, running along at his usual pace and waiting for that first quarter mark, growing nervous when he doesn’t hear it. He slows down to something that barely resembles running, turning his focus back on his breathing again as he keeps pushing himself, groaning aloud when he reaches the halfway point and realises he has as long still to go as the distance he has just finished. He tries to think about his latest visit to the doctor for motivation, reminds himself of the last time he had sciatica, compares himself to Nile who was recently warned about his cholesterol levels and had to choose between pills and exercise.

“One hundred metres left. Keep it up.”

The words set a fire under Erwin’s arse. He picks up his pace though his lungs feel near collapse, wanting to be done with it, wanting to stop but knowing he has to finish. A hundred metres sounds like nothing, but no matter how hard he runs he doesn’t reach the end, the stupid wanker on the app won’t tell him he’s done. He can feel himself slowing down again but he can’t help it, falling back to the slow jogging he started with before the interval is up.

“You have four minutes to recover.”

Erwin leans onto his thighs, gasping like someone who has just been saved from drowning. He can see little balls of light swimming across his field of vision and he grabs his left arm, almost expecting a shooting pain to start radiating up and down it. He presses his hand against his chest and lets his lips pull into a smile. A whole kilometre. 20% of the 5k he used to love. Surely it’s a good sign, a sign that he’s not in such a bad shape after all, that he’s not beyond hope yet, even at his age. He straightens his body, his breathing still falling heavy as he starts walking forward, still congratulating himself over his achievement.

Just then someone runs past him, making Erwin jump: a man, short and dark haired in all-black running gear. Erwin watches him as he sprints along, his steps falling so lightly he doesn’t seem to fully touch the ground. An overwhelming scent of clean, fresh laundry floods Erwin’s nostrils, overpowering the stench of sweat wafting up from under his hoodie; he can still smell it when the man has reached the bend the trail makes back toward the pond, when he’s left Erwin far behind.

Suddenly one kilometre seems barely worth a mention, a measly distance that Erwin is sure even sloths could cross in the time it took him. He finishes the remaining intervals grudgingly, keeping his eyes on the ground when the same man passes him a second time.

Still, Erwin was never one to accept defeat. He spends the rest of the day constructing the perfect mantra for occasions like this – and he does realise there will be many such occurrences if he is to continue training. It’s simple enough, and its effectiveness is put to the test a few days later when that same short man flies past him.

_That is my goal,_ Erwin tells himself.  _He is not my competition. Goal, not competition._

He keeps doing his intervals, gritting his teeth whenever the man catches him during his recovery times, gritting them twice as hard whenever he has to compare his own slow jogging to the man’s effortless running that makes Erwin suspect he’s training for a marathon. Every time he catches that scent of fresh laundry Erwin wants to bathe in a bathtub full of antiperspirant.

And still he elects four workouts for his second training week and even ends up doing a fifth, a 1k run in the middle of the week that tells him he’s improved his time by half a minute. When he finishes he turns to look behind himself triumphantly, only realising how stupid it is when he sees the empty trail.

The man prefers to run in the morning, just like Erwin. He realises this after a few runs he does after work and though he tries to tell himself he doesn’t like running in the dark, that there are too many dog walkers, that he feels more energised after a morning workout, Erwin knows it’s really the man’s presence he seeks, the excitement of thinking he might one day be as fast, that his legs could look as strong, that his pacing and posture and stamina could be as flawless. They acknowledge each other now when they cross paths, especially on the odd day here and there when Erwin circles the pond in the opposite direction. Sometimes when he runs, Erwin imagines striking up a conversation with the man, asking for workout tips, telling him about how he used to run a lot when he was younger, maybe even recommending the app he now uses, though the man doesn’t seem to be in need of any such assistance. Perhaps, if they got to know each other, they could carpool to the trail; it would be cost-effective, and good for the environment.

One time the man talks to Erwin, calling out and running over with Erwin’s headphones in his hand.

“Are these yours?” he asks in a voice that makes Erwin shiver; low and pleasant, the kind of voice Erwin would like narrating war documentaries.

“Yes, they must have fallen out of my pocket,” Erwin tells him, flashing a quick smile that goes unanswered. “Thank you, that’s very–”

“I figured they might be,” the man interrupts him; there’s a hint of north in his accent. “Don’t usually see anyone else here this early.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Erwin says, trying another smile; from this distance the clean scent of the man is nearly overpowering.

“Are they for music?”

Erwin takes a moment to answer, taken aback by the question he wasn’t expecting. “No, there’s an app I use,” he manages, even fishing out his smartphone for whatever purpose.

The man nods. “I hear there are a few good ones,” he comments, already taking a few steps along the trail. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

“Yes, see–” Erwin starts but the man has already run off.

The exchange keeps replaying itself in Erwin’s mind for days, and without really realising it, he starts imagining the commands from his app being spoken by the man instead. Now whenever they happen across each other, they both give a quick nod that Erwin accompanies with a smile despite himself. Once Erwin points out one of the man’s shoelaces has become untied, and is rewarded with a quick thank you. It comes as a surprise to Erwin how he never really noticed the man’s feet before; after all the time he’s spent watching him run, you’d think he would have taken note of how oddly small and dainty they are. It’s an exciting observation, though Erwin’s embarrassed to admit it even to himself.

All of this nearly makes Erwin lose sight of the progress he’s making, how nowadays the man doesn’t disappear from his sight as quickly as he once used to, how easy the 1k interval grows. It’s only after he’s run his first 5k in nearly twenty years that Erwin remembers his goal was never to be as good as some stranger running around the same trail. He shares the run on facebook, wondering whether he should expect a call from Marie later that day. He only looks up from his screen when he feels something soft under his foot: a black hoodie. He steps off it at once, picking it up and beating the bits of grass and dirt off it, catching that familiar clean scent. Without thinking, Erwin brings the fabric closer to his face, taking a deep breath; the pleasure he gets draws his eyes shut and makes him smile quietly to himself.

“What are you doing?”

Erwin turns around, nearly dropping the hoodie in the process. He can feel his face growing warm when he sees the frown on the man’s face.

“Ah,” he starts. “It’s… not what it looks like.”

“Uh-huh,” the man voices, reaching out his hand and looking at Erwin like he expects him to do something outlandish. “Sure.”

“I was just…” Erwin tries again, feeling the heat spreading down to his neck. “Admiring the fabric. I was… wondering where I might get–”

“It’s an off-brand thing,” the man says, pulling the hoodie on. “Can’t remember where I bought it.”

“Ah,” Erwin voices again, starting to move back toward the trail. “I see. Well, in that case I should probably–”

“I thought you’re done for today.”

Erwin looks up at the man in surprise. “Well, yes, I suppose I am,” he admits, rubbing at the back of his head.

The man lets out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a snort. “I was thinking I’d buy you a juice or something,” he says, “if you can keep up.”

Erwin watches as the man runs past him again, heading toward the car park, and it takes him a moment to follow.

It’s the fastest 1k he has ever run.


	7. Nsfw eruri week: bathing/washing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Around 3k words. Nsfw, ancient Roman au, gladiator Erwin, domestic slave Levi.

It’s still raining heavily when Levi leaves the amphitheatre. He finds it easier to push through the crowds than usually – the weather has left half the seats empty this time – but still Levi’s feet splash in the puddles of water anxiously whenever the flow of people grinds to a halt. It’s always like this after a fight, no time to lose but the citizens don’t know what it’s like to fear being late like he does. Behind him Levi can see someone else in a white tunic peering over the heads of the crowd in nervous anticipation.

When he manages to push past the mass of people, Levi sprints to a lazy run, heading back toward the town and entering it near the theatre, passing it and the adjoining porticoes. He follows the larger streets, crossing them by the stepping stones to keep from landing into the rivers of water filling the ruts left behind by hundreds and thousands of wagons and carts on the old grey and white stones. He turns a corner, barely glancing at the sign carved onto the red brick wall of a nearby building; he knows where he’s going.

It’s always a gamble when it rains as hard as this: should he visit the bakery first and risk the bread getting wet or visit the tavern and risk the wine getting cool? They’ll be cold from the fight on an evening like this, Levi guesses, though he wouldn’t know which one he’d prefer, to fill his stomach or to dull his mind. Like so often before, he chooses whichever is closest and enters the tavern, waiting in the perfumed heat for a moment before paying for an amphora of wine and requesting the bill to be sent to his master. He can feel the warmth of the liquid inside through the clay as he runs along, stopping by the bakery before heading home; by the time he gets there, the edges of the loaf have grown soft and soggy. But after such a disappointing turnout, it’s all the champions will get: cheap wine and rain-soaked bread.

The rain is still hammering the baked-earth tiles of the roof when Levi enters the villa through the back, walking straight into the kitchen to get everything ready, getting coarse wooden cups for the wine and a tray for the pieces of bread he tears from the loaf. He doesn’t hurry anymore; there’s nothing to prepare save for the fighters’ supper, his master having chosen to dine someplace else tonight. In passing Levi adds some olives and dried fruit on the tray – what the master doesn’t know won’t hurt him or his purse very much – since it seems unreasonable to give them nothing but plain bread. Levi’s eyes never strayed from them again as they fought side by side, mud up to their knees, teeth gritted as they slashed and hacked at their opponents. The big one took a spear to the shoulder this time, but it only slowed him down for a few seconds; after that it seemed it only managed to make him angrier.

Levi pours some of the wine into a jug and carries it past the small columns in the peristylium and into the bathroom, where the shallow, circular pool has been filled with hot water for washing. It makes the air in the room humid and breathing laboured, ever more so when the fighters walk in, dragging their feet as they sit down on the wooden stools with legs carved like lions’ heads; just the big one and the dark one, just like always. Levi must have heard their names during the few years they’ve lived here, but he’s never learned to use them and when he gets to work now he does it as silently as before.

He starts by cleaning the wound from the spear on the big man’s shoulder, taking care when he sews together the edges of the cut with catgut. The man never makes a sound, never even takes his eyes off the paintings of bathing virgins on the walls; the once vibrant blue has begun to dim and chip away where the women’s feet meet the river. Once Levi’s done tending to his wounds, the man gives him a curt nod which he answers in kind, the only communication they’ve ever had. The fighters exchange a few words with each other in some language Levi doesn’t recognise. They’re tired and serious, there’s nothing left of the boisterous laughter of the first months now and who can blame them? It seems even their master has finally begun to accept the fact they were a bad investment from the start, and that not even all his childish dreams of the glory of gladiators can bring him back the money he’s lost. Levi pours them more wine and they drink without talking while he spreads oil on their bodies, and offers them things to eat while he scrapes it off with a strigil, feeling a quiet satisfaction when he sees the muck and dirt coming off them.

The fighters are already climbing out of the hot water when the third man finally enters, always so much later than his friends, though Levi doesn’t understand where else he could possibly have to go. They exchange a look and a nod and the man sits down to wait, saying something to the others in the language they all share. While Levi passes them both folds of clean cloth to dry their bodies, he looks the man over from the corner of his eye: no large wounds, just a bruise above one of his heavy brows and a superficial cut on his right arm, nothing that requires sewing. Their eyes meet again and Levi turns his to the floor hurriedly, leaving the bathroom along with the fighters to fetch more wine and food from the kitchen and to empty the vase that’s gathering water from the leaking ceiling; even the smoky warmth of the oven is not enough to match the humid heat of the bathroom and when he enters again, Levi feels his breath hitching in his throat.

He passes the man a cup of wine without speaking, dipping a soft strip of cloth in the pool to clean out the dirt and gritty sand from the cut on his arm. Just like the big man, he doesn’t so much as wince at the touch, not even when Levi splashes some of the wine into the wound to clean it; the rivulets of thickened blood run down onto the floor and mix with the drink in the purplish puddle by their feet. Levi pulls up his tunic as he kneels down in front of the stool and starts washing the mud off the man’s legs.

“Not much pain today.”

Levi nods and grunts. The man’s words are heavy and clumsy, like carved from stone, and Levi knows even after all these years they match his own very well.

“Bad weather,” Levi mutters and the man agrees.

The silence returns but it’s easy and familiar now, made lighter by how long they’ve been doing this. The first times were different, Levi was tight as a bowstring in front of the man from fear of what he might do. He’d won an important match that day and his master had presented Levi as a reward – another sign that the brat didn’t know which way was up and which down, no one else would have ever thought Levi could make anything resembling a reward. The man didn’t seem offended, however, simply had Levi help him bathe and thanked him awkwardly once it was done, never laying a hand on him let alone anything else. It hadn’t gone past their master who had commented loudly on Levi’s ability to walk straight the following morning and sent his prize fighter a woman next time, but as far as Levi knows she’d not caught the man’s interest any better than Levi himself had. A few months later he’d beaten the champion of their master’s rival and given the chance to make a request had asked for Levi to tend to him after fights, giving no other reason than Levi’s skill with the strigil. Of course he didn’t know then that most of the slaves from the villa would be sent elsewhere or sold off, leaving no one but Levi to tend to the fighters in any case.

To Levi it doesn’t matter much how things ended up like this. He prefers the humid bathroom to the smoke-filled kitchen, and there’s something oddly pleasant in the routine of helping others wash their bodies. He doesn’t mind watching the games either, following the fighting from the stands, finding something very graceful in the fighters’ movements until they start hacking off limbs. He used to mimic them sometimes when no one was watching, finding a surprising strength and speed in his body, though as things stand they’re bound to be wasted in carrying amphorae home from the tavern.

When Levi lifts a little bottle from the floor, the man stands up without further invitation, keeping his legs shoulder-width apart as Levi starts spreading the oil over his large feet. It’s a task that pulls his focus and makes him remember that first time they did this, how he kept glancing at the man’s hands, expecting one of them to grab a hold of his arm or shoulder. It’s easy to do something like this to someone you’ve learned to trust, and now Levi savours how the hair on the man’s legs grows softer toward his thighs, and coarser again between them. They’re all saying there’s something wrong with his manhood now, but Levi knows it grows harder under his touch just like anyone else’s, like it does now that he covers it. They laugh at the size of it too but Levi thinks it suits the man, and anything smaller would look out of place with the heaviness of the rest of his body.

They don’t avoid each other’s eyes anymore while Levi does this; he’s used to the man’s steady gaze by now, and the way his breathing quickens while Levi’s hands are on his cock. Levi doesn’t think much of it – takes a lot of trust to let someone close it in their fist, so no wonder he still gets nervous – but sometimes it makes him scoff quietly to himself, some part of him lighting up with that second of power it gives him. And sometimes his hands linger, feeling out the weight of it against his palm, feeling the heat and girth of it that makes something within him stir.

Levi lets his fingers follow the trail of hair up to the man’s navel before spreading the slickness over his abdomen and chest, across his broad shoulders and up his neck to the edges of his face. He meets those eerily blue eyes for a brief moment before the man turns without command knowing his intentions by heart, offering first one arm and then the other, holding them up patiently while Levi pours out more oil from his bottle. The muscles of his strong back relax quickly under Levi’s touch when he stops to massage them, his breathing growing heavy from the roughness of his own movements. Even at this the man never makes a sound.

Levi kneels down again to work warm liquid into the dry skin of the man’s heels, tracing spots of mud he’s missed up and behind his knees. There’s another cut on the man’s thigh that Levi never noticed and he cleans it quickly before continuing with his task, standing up to spread the oil on the man’s buttocks, his thumb slipping between them for an instant, and in the silence there is no mistaking the sound it tempts out of the man: a low moan which dwindles into a sigh that makes the hairs on the back of Levi’s head stand on end.

As Levi watches, the muscles he left so supple grow tense and rigid as the man stands still as a statue. Levi’s hand still hovers over his arse but he doesn’t want to touch, doesn’t want to alarm the man though he’s feeling suddenly more curious than ever before. He wants to peer around him to see if his manhood has grown and hardened, but something keeps him rooted to the spot. Instead he reaches out slowly, like trying to pet a wild horse, his thumb pushing past the buttocks and the soft hair. He shivers when the man relaxes and moves closer, sighing again as soon as Levi finds the spot.

There’s something so indecent about it that it makes Levi pull away, and when the man turns around to face him he tries not to see how far toward its full size his cock has finally grown. He can feel his own pushing against the light fabric of his tunic, feels the weight of the man’s gaze on it when he tries to make sense of it all. Even in servitude, men like the gladiator are meant to kill and rule and take what they want, fight and fuck and dominate, not moan at the first suggestion of being taken. And someone like Levi has been bred to a world of silence, to say nothing more than ‘yes master’, to refuse no treatment, to ask for nothing, to demand no pleasure for himself. But here the man is, offering his body willingly for Levi’s use, offering him a taste of the power he has never been allowed to possess, and Levi can tell his fear is written on every inch of his skin.

Slowly the man reaches out his hand, just as carefully as Levi did before, and pulls him against his back. They stand pressed together as if waiting for their panting breaths to fall in time until Levi moves his fingers against his hole, growing stiffer when it makes the man gasp and push further toward his touch. Levi presses his forehead between the man’s shoulder blades and watches his hand as he ventures further, letting that oily wetness ease him inside the man, the tip of whose hardness he can feel brushing against his arm when he wraps it around his abdomen.

“More,” the man whispers; Levi wouldn’t have thought him so impatient.

He fits in another finger, flinching at the groan the man lets out, fearing it will carry past the room they’re in but forgetting it at the feel of that heat, how it seems to be sucking his flesh further, eager for more. His cock is aching for a taste of it, but the man seems pleased with this and Levi steadies himself, his left hand never straying under the tunic until the man moves. Levi watches him kneeling down on the floor in front of him and spreading his legs before pressing his cheek against the cool stones. Offering himself like this he looks like a common whore begging to be mounted for a couple of quadrans and with everything that the man is, every fibre of muscle and strength that lies within those thick limbs, Levi can’t help the sight filling him with a want the like of which he’s never been able to imagine.

He kneels behind the man in a rush, pulling his tunic over his head and casting it aside as he moves closer, thumbs tracing the edges of that opening for mere seconds before he grabs the man’s hips and pulls him down. There’s an impatience in the man’s movements that is more than a match to his own; he spreads his legs even further as soon as he feels the tip of Levi’s cock against his hole. After glancing quickly at the door, heart hammering in his chest like he’s expecting his master to come bursting into the room, Levi makes himself slick to ease his entry, laying a steadying hand on the small of the man’s back. The fighter grows unmoving and focused as Levi inches forward and stops to admire the sight before his eyes; though it goes against everything they’ve been made to believe, to Levi the man is most natural like this, forehead pressed against the floor as he waits to be taken, suddenly almost chaste in his stillness. Discarding the last flash of a thought to reconsider, Levi presses in, holding his breath until the tip of his cock has sunken into the tight heat.

The first thrust tempts out a short, low grunt, the second a hastily whispered word. Levi grits his teeth against the pleasure that threatens to peak already, trying to slow the man down with a firm hand on his back, but the touch turns quickly into a caress that leads Levi to the man’s prick. It has sprung up against his stomach and refuses to soften even when the steady pumping of Levi’s hips and hand have made the man break out in shivers and swears as he releases the first drops of his seed which smear his back when he turns over and pulls Levi on top of him, pausing to meet his gaze in a moment of hesitation before bruising his lips with fervent kisses that leave them both breathless.

Levi wastes no time in finding his way back past the man’s buttocks, letting the man guide his pace with the legs he’s hooked behind Levi’s back. He can feel his pleasure building toward its peak and he closes the man’s cock back inside his fist, nearly losing his balance as the man arches into the touch. Levi can barely hear the growl-like moans that escape his own throat as he watches the man, the eyes that search for his whenever they’re open, the mouth that has grown slack from the panting of his breath, the sheen of the oil that mixes with sweat on his sun-touched skin that paints him darker and makes his body harder for Levi to control. Taken over by a sudden restless urge, Levi moves both of his hands on the man’s thighs and slams into him, setting the speed of the man’s own hand with the pace of his thrusts, letting the sight of the man’s climax guide him to a quick and violent release.

Levi doesn’t know how long it takes them to disentangle their limbs, to clamber back onto their feet from the sweat-stained floor. He pulls his tunic back over his head and picks up the strigil; it feels heavier than before, his hands are shaking from its weight when he scrapes it over the man’s body, listening to the metamorphosis of the silence, cleaning up his seed as it runs down the man’s thigh. He gathers up the dishes and leaves the man to his bathing, washing up in the kitchen with water that’s meant for the wine. When he curls up in front of his master’s door to sleep, the floor underneath him feels just a little bit harder than before.


	8. Prompt: "Please don't do this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Around 1500 words. Canonverse, post ACWNR. Depictions of violence and bad head space things.

Erwin weighs the man across the room with his eyes, the smallness and strength of him that makes Erwin’s heart race in his chest. It would be different – such an unusual opponent – and Erwin doesn’t doubt the man will make a good match for him. He remembers the speed of that body, the force behind each futile lash of his knife, but most of all Erwin remembers how quickly it was over, and that’s what makes him curious, makes him hungry for a rematch now. It makes him forget – it already makes him forget.

“Erwin,” Mike tells him, leaning forward to shield the words from the others; lost in his thoughts, Erwin has managed to ignore the fretful expressions on their faces. “Please, don’t do this.”

Erwin doesn’t look up at the other man, simply continues to wind the strip of cloth around his hand; over the knuckles, tight against the palm, below his thumb, around his wrist.

“He likes to train alone,” Mike tries now; trying to evoke sympathy is a new tactic of his, Erwin notes, and so is the following. “Don’t involve him in this. Isn’t it bad enough you’ve made us all do it?”

Erwin keeps his eyes where they are, feeling the gazes of his fellow soldiers on him, feeling the ones that are missing. Flawed strategy, piling guilt on guilt; all it does is make Erwin’s hands work faster. He thinks back to all those times and knows why Mike has taken the most of it: to spare the others since they find it so odious. It has made the man too familiar, his moves too easy to predict, and Erwin has learned ways around the tremendous size and strength of the man’s body, ways to keep out of reach, ways to squirm out of the man’s clutch like an eel.

“You’ll do as you want,” Mike finally speaks, something dark in his tone – disappointment, perhaps? – as he turns away from Erwin, “but I’m not going to stay here and watch it.”

“It is your prerogative to leave,” Erwin tells him calmly, sticking the end of the strip of fabric under the previous folds before he calls out the man’s name.

He looks up and the indifference in his expression makes Erwin’s heart sink; it’s not something Erwin can work with, not what he needs right now. He imagines that furious rage that brought down the abnormal and traces the cut on his hand through the soft white cotton, reminding himself of the burning of Levi’s eyes then, the way his words came out in a growl; more animal than human. That’s what he needs, what he craves, what must put him in his place today, put him on the ground where he belongs.

“You’re up.”

Levi frowns, suddenly annoyed – but it’s not enough, not enough by a long shot. “What?”

Erwin steps forward onto a bare patch of floor and the others fall back, shaking their heads; he can still catch Mike from the corner of his eye, standing at the door, rooted to the spot.

“Hand-to-hand combat is an important skill,” Erwin says, flexing his fingers as his mind works out ways to get the man to agree. “You’ve yet to show me what you can do.”

“I’ve already fought you,” Levi calls out from across the silent room. “You already know you can beat me.”

Erwin scoffs. “We both know that’s not true.”

Levi’s eyes narrow but he doesn’t speak, simply takes a few steps toward and around Erwin; staring, assessing, questioning. “Why should I waste my time on shit like this?”

There’s nothing Erwin can accomplish by giving Levi an order now; the man is still too volatile, still too stubborn. It has to be made tempting, the idea must be sold and purchased but in what disguise? Erwin measures Levi with his eyes, tries to calculate the degree to which his pride has been broken. Would he fight for something so trivial now? Would he care about proving himself?

“Name your prize,” Erwin says instead, thinking there must be something Levi wants, something Erwin can’t guess.

There’s a flicker of something in Levi’s eyes that makes Erwin breathe sharply, a greedy little glint he could hardly have imagined before now. He watches the man take another few steps forward; light and soft, like he’s ready to pounce.

“After,” Levi merely tells him, and Erwin’s nod doesn’t make a bit of difference to that impassive look on his face.

They take their places and Erwin’s heart starts pounding as he’s filled with that flood of anticipation: for the pain, for the punishment, for the absolution that only lasts while the fists still find his body. He lifts his own to cover his face while Levi’s stay by his sides; he’s used to defending himself, Erwin realises, used to rewarding the stupidity of the people who attack him with unexpected force. Erwin tests the weight on his feet for a moment, bracing himself before clenching his fists and beginning.

Despite the decoy of his left hook, the first punch he throws with his right hand is a miss, whereas Levi’s knee meets his thigh; its force is lacklustre at best, an indication the man hasn’t found his balance, hasn’t centred his weight like he planned. Erwin’s swift kick makes him regret it as he lands on his back on the floor, jumping back onto his feet too fast for Erwin to seize the advantage. They make some distance, staring, breathing, before Levi strikes; Erwin barely has time to curse that speed before he finds it has sent him reeling, exhilarated and aching on his jaw. He turns around too slowly to catch Levi slipping behind him, bringing him to his knees with a swift blow and hooking his leg around Erwin’s neck, pulling him down onto the floor with the weight of his body. Erwin fights for breath, his arms reaching out for flesh and bone, the room already blurring when he finally manages to dig his fingers into Levi’s shoulder.

He brings the man over his body and pins him to the ground, wasting too much time in locking Levi’s arm behind his back to watch out for his legs. Levi’s heel crashes into his spine and the pain makes Erwin pull up, distracting him for long enough to let the man slip out of his hold and drive his elbow into Erwin’s face, ending the race for the first blood drawn. There’s a second of blissful daze until Erwin’s eyes catch Levi’s legs and he ends the man’s struggle to get to his feet by pulling on his right ankle, catching his next kick with the palm of his hand and forcing his toes against the floor. Levi squirms under his weight, fights to turn around, his legs flexing against Erwin’s grip as he growls like a beast. Erwin draws a breath and tastes the iron in his mouth, feels a sting of disappointment during the second he has to wonder whether this was really it until Levi pushes onto his knees, falling back and bringing his weight down on Erwin, using the surprise to slip out of his reach.

Erwin’s keeps his stance unsteady as he gets to his feet, blocking Levi’s punch with his forearm while his own lands on the man’s cheek, sending him back for a breath’s length of strategy. Erwin catches the anger in those eyes, the desperation, the hunger to win that has nothing to do with anything Levi’s been promised. He aims his foot at Erwin’s head and ends up on the floor after Erwin grabs his leg mid-kick and throws him down, admiring the grace with which he rises again and comes at him, using all of his body, seizing every advantage, always staying faster as Erwin’s body grows heavier and clumsier. The strips of fabric around their hands grow red, leaving smears onto skin and clothing alike as they fail and succeed.

Erwin loses track of time, loses his will to win, regains the purpose of all of it as Levi’s elbow knocks the air out of him and brings him to his knees, and he lets the next kick to his chest land him on his back. Levi’s weight on Erwin grounds him and clears his mind enough so he can count the hits that land on his face; one for every life lost, that’s what Erwin hopes for, but the cold blue of his eyes freezes Levi’s hand. Erwin knows they both recognise it; it’s too unmistakable, the guilt beneath the surfaced anger, how they’re suddenly so much alike. Levi’s expression shifts first, back to anger as he learns the truth behind the slackness of Erwin’s arms, the way he’s been used and what for. He gets to his feet quickly, spitting blood on the floor next to Erwin before marching out, leaving Erwin on the floor to add this to the count of all the wrong he’s done.


	9. Prompt: "You're the only one I trust to do this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~650 words. Canonverse, a quiet moment involving tea.

Erwin expected telling Levi to stay still to be as futile as those screams he’s heard so many times, of people begging the titans to spare them, and the quick submission to the order takes him by surprise. The relief is bitter and short-lived; it must mean Levi’s injury is worse than he was willing to admit before, or that the pain has worsened since the doctor examined him. Erwin glances at him over his shoulder as he lights a fire in the small stove in the corner of the room; hunched over a table to write his report, his left leg resting on a small stool. Combined with his expression of immense concentration the posture seems to Erwin suddenly almost child-like.

Knowing better than to interrupt Levi while he’s writing – slow in the task to begin with, and ever more so to avoid getting stained by ink – Erwin walks around the room quietly, filling a pot with water and setting it down to boil, watching Levi’s body relax as the stove starts driving the cold of the castle from the stone walls. There’s a good kind of silence in the room, the kind that guilt and plans and anxious thoughts don’t rush in to fill; the quiet itself seems to be breathing more easily between them.

Levi only looks up at the sound of Erwin removing the lid from the tin box of tea the man keeps locked in the small drawer of his desk. When Erwin picked it up he stopped to reflect on the sad lack of personal belongings that filled the rest of the space; just a tin box of tea and two bars of soap next to a whole lot of nothing but he knows: Levi comes from nothing, owns nothing, wants nothing until the fight is over if it’s not tea and soap. Erwin has heard those words only once and even now they feel almost stolen, though Levi was willing enough when he entrusted them to him.

Their eyes meet briefly before Levi turns back to his task and Erwin begins measuring out the tea, putting in all the care he gives to other, dissimilar tasks; maintenance of his manoeuvre gear, details of his reports, maps of the long-range scouting formation. A small spoonful per cup and one for the pot – as Erwin likes to think it – brewed slowly but not for too long not to turn it bitter to the taste. He places the tray carefully onto the small round table, pouring the tea while Levi finishes a sentence in that neat, careful hand that is so easy for Erwin to read even when he’s nodding off at his desk. Before he picks up his cup Levi stretches his neck and clicks his tongue.

“All this sitting down breaks my body worse than hours with the gear,” he mutters as Erwin stirs his tea.

“I see you’re using your time wisely,” he replies, nodding at the paperwork before turning back to Levi. “I won’t waste my breath by telling you again how important it is that you rest until you’ve recovered.”

“And still you just did,” Levi tells him sullenly, holding his cup in that peculiar way as he takes a sip.

Despite its briefness, Erwin catches the smile on the man’s lips and allows himself a breath of relief.

“I’m glad to see it’s to your liking,” he comments, expecting nothing – a curt nod at most – but instead Levi turns to him, his expression oddly serious.

“You’re the only one I trust to do this,” he says, his tone low and earnest.

Erwin feels himself smiling as he looks at Levi, whose brow has bent into that usual frown again.

“In that case I’ll keep giving the task the care and attention it deserves,” he assures the man, turning to his own work only when Levi has continued with his.


	10. Prompt: "You heard me. Take. It. Off."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another old prompt. Canonverse, ~700 words.

There’s smoke and blood in the rain; memories of the night Kenny found him, of his mother’s corpse burning and the way his fingers tasted when he sucked on the sores and blisters on his skin – souvenirs of hours spent with no other company than a knife and Kenny’s harsh words, and sometimes Levi couldn’t tell which cut him worse. His father’s harsh words – for who the hell else would’ve given enough of a shit, cared enough to tear his mother’s shirt off his back with him kicking and scratching and biting, every command hurting like a punch in the gut. “You heard me. Take it off.” “I’m not going to fucking tell you again.” “It’s no good to you now.”

If Levi expected an embrace, a softness, a moment of simple human decency for the trouble of his tears then, the man wasted no time in setting him straight. Levi watched him from the room’s width he kept between them, and learned his fear of disease from the distance. Even now when he washes himself, Levi can sometimes hear Kenny’s voice. “Scrub harder.” “Under the nails.” “You want to be a corpse like your mother?”

Lifting his face toward the heavy clouds above, Levi tries to find something cleansing in the rain, something of the first time he washed himself outside the Underground, but the more he smells it, the more the air seems to reek of ash and decay. It’s only in the mind, Levi knows; in the out-lived day with its bloodshed and pyres, the flames of which are now going out, leaving behind a collection of butchered remains, of bones cracking with heat.

Levi looks out at the smear of blood in the horizon, the dull glow of the fire pierced by the dying rays of the setting sun somewhere beyond the reach of the rain. He only looks away from it once, to glance at Erwin when he walks out to the edge of the wall and sits next to him, tight-lipped and heavy-limbed. The rain grows heavier, pulls at their clothes, makes Levi finally feel the day’s fight in his body.

“What do you think started it?” he asks Erwin, looking out towards the glow of the burning town.

“Lightning, most likely,” the man answers. “The rain will put it out.”

In his mind Levi pictures the fire spreading, running across dry grass, flames licking the tops of trees, searing Titan flesh; he wonders if it would smell the same as the bodies of his comrades do, burning behind him now. Like Farlan and Isabel did, going up in smoke, turning into soot and ash and dirt.

So much for fire being cleansing.

“It was someone’s hometown,” Erwin suddenly says, and Levi looks up to see the deep frown on his face. “A soldier. I can’t remember his name, but I remember he mentioned it.”

There’s a lie in the statement, but Levi lets it be and stares instead at the dull gleam in the distance, wishing there was something that could wash away the guilt in Erwin’s voice, wishes he could scrub the man’s skin raw or burn the clothes he’s wearing to be rid of it. Wishes all those hours he spent cutting and slashing and stabbing would’ve taught him how to carve out that feeling or make a new space for the care that grows inside him; to make Erwin care for himself like he should.

“We all come from somewhere,” he mutters, feeling Erwin’s eyes on him. “If you ask me, it’s more important where we go – and what we do while we’re getting there.”

Erwin stays quiet for a while, and Levi hopes his ill-made words are like the cool water was on the sores on his hands in that past life; a balm, crude but rare enough in the barren darkness of the Underground.

“It’s easier to find the purpose on the journey,” Erwin finally says, “when you’re here, keeping me company.”

Levi pulls the hood of his cape over his wet strands of his hair and stares out into the distance where the raging of the flames is no longer a match to the fire burning in his own chest.


	11. (Untitled)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About 4k. Some kind of modern warfare au thing. Nsfw stuff at the end.

When his eyes got used to the dark, Levi could’ve laughed, seeing what he’d stumbled into. Though it didn’t make much of a difference – any place with four walls and a roof felt good enough right now. He could barely hear the gunshots anymore, his ear was ringing so badly; nearly enough to keep him from realizing how loud he was, dragging his left leg behind himself while he shuffled along down the length of a hallway, the distance of which seemed a hell of a lot longer with the potential of instant death lurking behind every door.

A hospital. Or something that passed for a hospital in this hellhole anyway.

He kept blinking the light out of his eyes while walking, weapon at the ready, though the thing would’ve made a decent crutch and would’ve likely been just as useful as such. But he hobbled onward – goddamn shrapnel stinging worse with every fucking step – looking for a place to rest, to do a better job of the hasty mess he managed to make on the field with a tourniquet and a roll of a bandage that was unraveling even now; somewhere further in, away from windows, where he could wait for the extraction team. There would be an extraction team. Would fucking have to be.

Motherfucking ambush. Should’ve known better than to trust the goddamn insurgents and their piece of shit intel. Whoever in the brass fucked this up had better lose their fucking job over it.

He gritted his teeth not to swear out loud and kept going, turning every corner like it was the last thing he’d ever do, arms pulling the rifle against his shoulder hard enough to make his hands go numb. Empty hospital beds, mattresses strewn across the floor. Instrument trays. A one-eyed teddy bear sitting on a window sill. He passed a supply cart and filled his pockets quickly with aseptic gauze and antiseptic wipes before moving on. Around a corner and further along the hallway, stopping when he heard something. Shuffling. Quiet clicking sounds.

Couldn’t say just where they were coming from. Somewhere further down the corridor? Levi chewed the inside of his mouth for a second and turned his head, aiming his good ear toward the two doors still left at end of the hallway, but heard nothing.

Shit. Could be anything. Could be a fucking kid in there for all he knew. One good shot and his head would blow up like a ripe melon.

Levi readjusted the weapon, pulling it further against his shoulder before he took another step, pausing to listen, catching barely a second’s worth of footsteps echoing his own.

Alright. Survival of the fucking fittest. One quick shot. Nothing to it. Then he could rest, get off his mangled leg. Get a drink of water to flush the blast fallout from his throat. One hell of a reward.

He paused at the first of the doors, trying to catch a reflection of anything in the shards of glass still framing the hole where a window had once been but saw nothing but darkness. He allowed himself a breath’s length of certainty, of being alive for fucking sure, before stepping forward. Weapon first, nearly pulling the trigger the moment he caught the human shape by the back wall.

A helmet. Uniform. Camo, nearly invisible in the dark.

“Friendly! Don’t shoot!”

The words were a split-second decision, and he raised his hands for good measure, pointing the barrel of his rifle toward the ceiling while the figure did the same. They both breathed, Levi counted two heavy exhales before he relaxed and dropped his weapon, leaning onto it when he limped across the room.

“Sergeant.”

The word came in lopsided and muffled. Levi checked the man’s insignia, leaning against the wall and letting it support his way to the floor.

“Lieutenant,” he replied, pulling his helmet off his head and swearing as he straightened his leg.

The man sat down next to him, holding his right arm and grunting. He extended his left hand and Levi took it, giving it a quick squeeze.

“Erwin.”

“Levi,” he told the man, turning back to his leg. Might as well be on a first name basis in this fucking bitch of a situation. The man said something else, lowering his voice.

“You should talk into this ear,” Levi pointed at his right side, trying to keep his own voice quiet. “The other one’s shot.”

“Need a hand?” Erwin asked after leaning closer, helping Levi roll up his pant leg up to where he’d tied the tourniquet while he’d still been crouching behind the tipped-over tramcar he’d been using for cover.

“Goddamn IEDs,” Levi swore, gritting his teeth and groaning when Erwin started examining the leftover scraps of a banged-up Ford Focus sticking out of his shin and calf. “Every fucker with a pair of pliers can make a bomb these days. Goddamn internet.”

Erwin grunted and passed Levi a belt. He took it between his teeth, biting down hard when Erwin started pulling a piece of metal the size of a folded up post-it note out of his flesh. Levi passed him the antiseptic wipes and gauze as soon as the shrapnel was out, breathing a little easier by the time the man started winding the bandage around his leg.

“The rest of them will have to stay in for now,” he told Levi leaning over to his good ear before tying up the loose end of the dressing.

Levi nodded a thank you, pulling down his pantleg and checking the tourniquet before laying his leg straight on the concrete floor. Next to him, Erwin lit a cigarette and offered him one too. Levi accepted, letting Erwin light it and taking a deep drag. Might as well fuck up his lungs, since chances were he wouldn’t be using them for much longer anyway.

“You need help with your arm?” he asked Erwin who shook his head after a quick glance at his bloodied right sleeve.

“It’s alright for now,” he told Levi, lifting the cigarette back between his lips. “Hurts like hell.”

Levi grunted in acknowledgement, his focus shifting back to the pain in his leg for a moment before he forced it away.

“What’s the situation?”

Erwin exhaled, picking up a map and a flashlight off the floor by his right; Levi guessed he’d been looking at them earlier.

“I was hoping you would’ve told me,” he said, leaning towards Levi’s ear, smelling like cigarette smoke and sweat.

Levi shook his head.

“Fucking shit show out there,” he said, pushing a few sweat-soaked strands of hair off his forehead. “Can’t speak for the platoon or the company, but my squad’s gone.”

“Sorry.”

“They were good people,” Levi stated, smoking his cigarette, pausing for a drink of water from his camelback. In a flash he saw Ral, lying in the dirt with her guts out and he focused again on the cigarette. “Last I saw, Zoe’s squad was still fighting – what was left of them, anyway.”

“Where?”

“South of the school. Towards the newspaper press,” he told the man, coughing quietly into his sleeve. “I didn’t stop to count, but I think I saw maybe half a dozen of them.”

Erwin grunted in acknowledgment, marking a few things down on the map.

“As far as I can tell, command fell apart the second that first bomb went off,” he said, dragging on his smoke and looking down at the map, voice calm despite the violent shaking of his left hand.

“You okay?” Levi asked him, nodding at the tremor when Erwin didn’t seem to understand.

“It’s just the adrenaline,” he told Levi, straightening out the map. “I’ve been trying to get a sense of what happened. I guess there’s no point in wondering if they knew we were coming or not.”

“That’s for fucking sure,” Levi agreed, thinking back to the chaos that had erupted so suddenly; it had felt like they’d been taking fire from every fucking direction.

“If the command had held, I think we could’ve pushed through here,” Erwin said, pointing out a part of town Levi knew was full of back alleys, little passageways between buildings with barely a window facing them. “I guess it’s too late now.”

He let the map fall down on the floor next to him, smoking his cigarette without talking. Levi kept quiet too, listening to the muffled gunshots and grimacing through the pain in his leg. Shock starting to wear off. It wouldn’t be long now.

Levi let out a breathy laugh. “Could be worse,” he said, taking a last drag of his cigarette before putting it out against the floor, brushing the mess over to the wall with his hand.

“How do you think?”

“At least we’ve got three good ears between us,” Levi said, taking another sip of water, “and one leg and arm.”

Erwin laughed too and put out his cigarette. “Silver lining,” he said, exhaling the last of the smoke. “I was never really good at finding those.”

“With the shit life I’ve had,” Levi started, leaning his rifle against the wall to his left, “it’s been a fucking requirement.”

Erwin made a sympathetic sound but didn’t speak; Levi stood the silence for a minute before breaking.

“What kind of gear you got?”

It took the man a moment to acknowledge what he’d said.

“I’m pretty good on ammo,” he started listing, gathering up his supplies as he spoke. “First aid kit’s looking empty by now. I was going to look if I could find something here.”

“I don’t think you’ll find any drugs,” Levi told him, shifting his position on the floor and grimacing, “but there’s plenty of gauze and shit if you need it.”

Erwin stayed quiet for a moment, looking at Levi’s leg before rummaging through his kit, pulling out a small pouch of white powder.

“You need any?”

Levi shook his head. “Save it for later,” he told Erwin, already wondering which one of them would end up needing it the most. “You buy that in the capital?”

Erwin nodded. “You can trade it for pretty much anything,” he said, “if you know the right people.”

Levi grunted to agree; he’d heard of that before.

“You should get some rest,” Erwin told him, pushing onto his feet with a groan. “I’ll look around a bit, but I won’t go far.”

“Sure.”

“Did you hit your head before?”

Levi shook his head and dragged his pack closer on the floor to use it as a pillow. Laying there in the dark, he could hear the shots ringing out again. The rapid tapping of machine guns. The occasional explosion from a mortar. He was still awake when Erwin came back but fell asleep soon after. A short-lived relief; his leg woke him up and pulled beads of sweat out of his skin when he sat up from the floor. The smell of Erwin’s MRE made him feel sick and starving at the same time.

“Can I get a hit?” he asked, pulling himself further towards the wall. “Not a lot. Just to take the edge off.”

Erwin said nothing but passed him the little pouch. An inhale and suddenly nothing was so fucked up anymore, and Levi understood why Erwin was so fucking calm about all of it. The pain in his leg dulled to an ache and after Erwin reminded him, Levi pulled out his own MRE pack and warmed up some beef teriyaki though he didn’t feel hungry anymore.

“Any news?”

Erwin shook his head.

“It’s gotten quiet outside a couple of times,” he told Levi, eating his meatloaf, “but after a while it picks up again. Guess that means someone’s still fighting out there.”

Levi grunted through a mouthful of beef. Hange sure was a tough motherfucker – if it was Hange who was still giving them hell out there.

“How’s your ear?” Erwin asked him and he shrugged.

“Same as before,” he stated. “I hear alright with the other one, so I can keep watch while you sleep a little.”

Erwin nodded, finishing his meatloaf and lying down on the floor, arm folded behind his head, eyes still open, staring up at the ceiling in the dark. Levi glanced at him, only now noticing his face. It looked familiar, like he’d seen the man around base sometime and thought ‘damn’ but known better than to keep throwing any gasoline into that particular fire.

“What do you think the odds are?”

Erwin stayed quiet for a while, then laughed. “Well, in a way it’s fifty fifty, isn’t it?” he said, laughing again. “We either make it out of here or we don’t.”

Levi laughed too, scoffing breathily into his beef teriyaki. “I feel like I’ve beaten worse odds before,” he said, growing serious before adding, “So you haven’t thought of a plan either?”

Erwin shook his head. “We could wait till dark and try to get out without being noticed,” he said, “but there’s nothing around for miles, and you can’t walk that far on your leg, and I can’t carry you.”

Levi kept quiet, finishing his meal before whispering, “You could walk that far.”

Erwin turned to look at him, staring up for a couple of seconds before lying back down and shaking his head. Levi waited for him to say something but he didn’t, and Levi didn’t push it either. He’d do the same thing if the situation was reversed. Didn’t matter that they’d never met before this. A brother’s a brother – and maybe it was the prospect of having less than a day to live, but Levi felt more attached to this one than most others.

After Erwin fell asleep, Levi shuffled over to the open door of the room, sitting down by it to get his good ear pointed towards the abandoned hallway beyond. He heard nothing to get alarmed over; just the ever-present gunshots in the distance and the occasional mortar explosion. And Erwin snoring, quiet and steady. Levi watched his chest rising and falling with the sound, the even rhythm broken here and there with a groan. The arm looked bad and still it probably wasn’t any worse than his own leg was.

Levi glanced at it in passing, thinking an ache rather than feeling it when he saw the mangled flesh. Fucking insurgents. Couldn’t get out of this hellhole fast enough, and he’d make sure to get sent somewhere else next, somewhere where the insides of the brass’ heads held something other than pure shit.

A new noise broke out in the corner of the room near Erwin, a scratching, like a rat digging through drywall. Levi turned his head to hear it, thinking he could make out words when the sound rang out again. He dragged himself across the floor to Erwin’s pack, locating the radio just as the man sat up, awake.

“What are you doing?”

Levi shushed him quiet, leaning over the radio like the movement was somehow going to make it rattle again. When it finally did, the words were barely recognizable as speech beyond the static; Levi couldn’t even tell what language it was.

“What do you want to do?” he asked Erwin, not wanting to make that call.

The man stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then picked up the receiver when the radio thrust out a few more garbled soundbites.

“This is lieutenant Smith. Does anyone copy? Over.”

They stared at the machine while it kept its silence; Levi chewed his lip to keep his nerves from breaking; the whole damn thing was close to giving him the shits.

“I repeat, this is–”

“This is second lieutenant Zoe, my squad and I are awaiting extraction. Is there anyone–”

The sound broke up mid-sentence; Erwin waited a few seconds before trying again.

“This is lieutenant Smith. Do you copy? I need extraction or a med evac. I’m at an abandoned hospital, north of the marketplace, at the crossing of–”

“Lieutenant?” the radio rattled and groaned, barely intelligible. “Lieutenant, did you say that you need–”

Erwin waited another couple of seconds before repeating their coordinates, but the radio stayed silent and without the confirmation, Levi relaxed on his spot by the wall again; something about the feeling pushed up memories of foster care, but the drugs he’d taken kept out the worst of it.

“You reckon they heard you?”

Erwin sighed and grunted as he settled down next to Levi.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Not much else we can do other than wait to find out.”

Levi scoffed and took a swig out of his camelback. “Sure hope your luck is better than mine,” he stated and Erwin laughed.

“Yeah well,” he muttered, accepting the water when Levi passed it to him. “If I were you I’d find something else to count on.”

Levi swore quietly but laughed too. He liked this guy more and more; guess it was another sign of his shit luck that they were only meeting now. Felt like he could listen to Erwin talk for hours – and that was definitely a first, with how full of shit most people were.

“So how’d you end up in this hellhole anyway?” he asked Erwin just to hear him speak some more.

“Academy graduate,” the man said, offering Levi a cigarette and lighting just the one when he refused. “We’re all commissioned as second lieutenants. It’s my second time here now.”

Impressive, that. The Academy. Levi’d dreamed of it himself once upon a time, but figured no one would write a letter of recommendation for a kid whose record showed a stint in juvie.

“What about you?”

Levi shrugged. “Enlisted at eighteen,” he explained in short. “Seemed like the least dumb thing to do at the time.”

“And now?” Erwin asked, laughing when Levi swore.

“I guess there are smarter things,” he said, looking around the small room and shaking his head. “I didn’t exactly think I would–”

Suddenly Erwin raised his left hand and Levi fell quiet at once. He strained to hear anything out of the ordinary, anything other than his own ragged breathing, but felt as though he might as well have been deaf.

“Do you hear that?” Erwin asked him a whisper and Levi shook his head, heart racing.

“I don’t hear anything.”

Slowly and soundlessly, Erwin pushed himself up from the floor and made his way to the door. When he saw Levi struggling to his feet, he gestured for him to sit back down, but Levi grabbed his rifle and shuffled across the floor; no more agony, just plain old searing, gut-wrenching pain. He paused to lean on Erwin’s shoulder for a few seconds once he reached him.

“What is it?” he asked, chest clenching at the sight of Erwin’s expression; vigilant and stern, but reassuringly calm.

“Footsteps.” The word was barely audible; if it hadn’t been muttered into his right ear, Levi would’ve missed it.

He tried to hear it, a quiet shuffling, a couple thuds of heavy boots, but caught nothing, and the silence started to make him more nervous than any amount of noise would’ve. He kept glancing up at Erwin, trying to read the urgency from his face, but saw no change for what felt like a good five minutes – plenty of time for him to make sure his gun was loaded, just in case.

When Erwin finally relaxed, Levi let his own breathing grow even again as Erwin helped him cross the room back to their earlier spot.

“I’m not sure what it was,” Erwin whispered into Levi’s ear, settling down next to him. “Should keep an ear out, stay sharp.”

“Hope you got your rest earlier,” he told the man, “’cause I’m fucking useless. Couldn’t hear a goddamn thing.”

“Don’t worry, I got it,” Erwin said, leaning his back against the wall and sighing. “Might need you as gunman if–”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Levi said, leaning his rifle against the wall on his left. “Just drag my ass where you need me and I’ll take care of it.”

Erwin let out a laugh and they both fell quiet, like the sudden threat was holding their tongues. Levi stretched out his leg and stared at the ceiling, still trying to listen for any sound he could trace to the inside of the hospital. A couple of gunshots rang out again somewhere in the city beyond, breaking the calm. Levi gave himself a moment, let his barriers down for just a minute and remembered them: Ral, Schultz, Bosado, Jinn. Fuck. Levi glanced at his watch and gritted his teeth. It hadn’t been six hours since he last saw them alive.

A sudden loud snort drew Levi’s attention and he slapped Erwin quickly on the arm with the back of his hand.

“Hey,” he told the man when he woke. “You’re supposed to listen.”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to–”

“Right, yeah,” Erwin said, rubbing his face with his left hand and groaning. “Sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

Levi shrugged off the apology, following Erwin from the corner of his eye when the man started going through his gear. Looking for his energy gum, probably.

“Need me to keep you awake?”

Erwin looked up, thick brows furrowed, staring at Levi for a few silent seconds before Levi spoke again.

“I can help you stay awake,” he said again. Fuck caution. They were both as good as dead anyway.

Erwin didn’t speak, not even when Levi unzipped his trousers and pushed his hand in through the opening, searching for skin. He wrapped his hand quickly around Erwin’s cock, satisfied with the way it swelled and grew within his fist – with the sound it drew out of the man: a low grunt that softened into a moan. He watched Erwin as he let his head fall back against the wall, eyes closed and lips parted. Levi had expected something a little less pliant, had expected Erwin to take a moment to get into it, but this felt better. He tightened his hold and quickened his pace, left hand palming his own erection through combat gear too clumsily to make it better but hard enough to make it worse. He stopped when Erwin grabbed the collar of his uniform jacket and pulled him onto his lap, straddling and holding on to his shoulder for balance.

“Can you?” he asked Levi breathily. “With your–”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Levi grunted, gritting his teeth when he moved as much of his weight off his injured leg as he could.

Levi swatted Erwin’s hand away when he tried to finish the job of unbuttoning his trousers; he wanted to do it himself, to pull Erwin’s cock out and catch that moment of relief on the man’s face. He hissed a swear when Erwin laughed at how impatient he was, and turned that laugh into a groan by running his thumb over the swollen flesh at the tip. Erwin arched his back, tried to buck his hips off the floor but Levi held him down – a little longer, he wanted it to last, wanted to keep looking at the Lieutenant underneath him. If it wasn’t for the fear of death, this would’ve been a fantasy come to life. Or hell, maybe the fear wasn’t so bad either.

“Fuck,” Erwin breathed, drawing a rapid, hissing breath. “Oh, fuck, I’m…”

His words faded into moans and gasps when he finished, pooling onto the calloused skin between Levi’s thumb and forefinger. He grabbed a pack of gauze and ripped it open with his teeth, pouring a splash of water on the cloth before getting to work.

“What are you doing?” Erwin asked him, looking down onto his lap where Levi was running the wet gauze over his softening cock.

“Cleaning up,” Levi explained quickly, wiping his hands with another piece of gauze before throwing them both in the corner of the room.

“I’m not so good with my left–”

“It’s okay, I got it,” Levi said, unzipping his own pants to get to the throbbing ache.

He kept his eyes on Erwin when he pulled it out, holding his breath when the pink on his cheeks deepened to red. He’d be done in record time. No fucking doubt.

“You always this impatient?” Erwin asked him, laughing when Levi told him to shut the fuck up.

“I waited a whole six hours didn’t I?” he asked back, closing the collar of Erwin’s jacket inside his left fist. “Not that it was my first thought to–”

A door slammed somewhere inside the hospital, so loud that even Levi could hear it. He swore as he got up and thrust his erection back behind the zipper, grabbing his rifle as soon as his hands could reach it. Behind him Erwin was doing the same, already halfway to the door by the time Levi could get to his feet. He shuffled after him, positioning himself on the left side of the doorway so he could get the first shots in, should it come to that. He could hear the footsteps now, a fuckton of them; heavy boots, hurried walking, doors banging open along the hallways. Levi held his breath and tested his weight against the floor, pulling the stock of the rifle into his shoulder, holding it at the ready. He had top-class aim. They told him he should’ve become a goddamn sniper. He could take them. One at a time, the only way to–

“Eastern hallway’s clear, Staff Sergeant.”

The fucking extraction team. Couldn’t wait another five goddamn minutes.


	12. "move me baby"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little incomplete ficlet I wrote as part of a writing prompt advent calendar that N made me. Figure skater Levi and coach Erwin. Inspired by Movement by Hozier.

He was a force of nature on the ice, a flash of thunder and summer heat in the biting cold. From the moment he did the final check on the laces on his skates to the second he stepped out of the rink, Erwin’s eyes were drawn and locked, like a heat-seeking missile and its target. He leaned onto the side and let his gaze take in the man as he moved around the course before coming to the middle. His breath hitched in his throat when Levi assumed the position; starting, head cocked to the side, arms entwined and outstretched, hands clasped. He could see Levi’s calming breaths in the rise and fall of his shoulders. Even during practice he was absolutely committed, treated every run-through like a competition performance, and Erwin admired him for it – admired him, and feared for him all at once.

The first note. Music box and heavy drums. Levi moved, his feet gliding, flying across the ice at the first kick. Effortless, like he put no force into it, no thought, no practice. Like he was made for it. Erwin felt shivers on his body when Levi skated past him, face stern in concentration. He switched to skating backwards and then back again, keeping his movements big and slow, trusting the crescendo Erwin had choreographed – finally trusting his decision.

Only Erwin could’ve told when Levi prepared for the first jump. A quadruple loop, but from the length of his glide before it, you’d have thought he was doing a double. He extended an arm – another thing he’d learned to trust Erwin on – and landed to a beautiful arch that he broke only to move on to the first pirouette. Erwin listened to the scratch of his skates against the ice, letting it meld into the music.

The pace quickened. The first part of the step sequence, Levi soared, his feet became a blur until he slowed down. Glides, hydroblading, Ina Bauer. The music was building up again, leading Levi into the next jump. A quad flip, triple salchow combination, executed to a level of perfection Erwin both envied and praised. In his career he’d rarely mastered the technique to that level of beauty. Now, after months of hard work letting down his guard and his stubbornness, Levi was nothing but grace in his transitions; an angel or the devil, but certainly no mere mortal. Not anymore.

A choir joined the song, bringing forth something ancient and powerful; like the chant of some long-forgotten people. Levi jumped again – triple axel, flawless – and moved on to the other part of the step sequence. He was exhausted. Erwin knew it only because Levi had told him. His movements showed not even a hint of it. Step sequence, transition, the final quadruple Lutz – and there Erwin caught it, a whisper of a strain only he would see – that Levi would only let him see.

The song wound down to the bare bones of the choir and Levi glided into a pirouette. He grabbed the blade of his skate and lifted his leg; another feat Erwin had never been able to accomplish himself. He cast his eyes upward, Erwin could see him frowning, and when the music finally stopped, so did he, as abruptly, leaving behind only a feeling of longing – like something was now finished but desperately unfulfilled. Erwin saw the rapid up-and-down of his chest when he wiped his brow and turned to look at him, still frowning.

“Can I take it again?”

“Give yourself a minute,” Erwin ordered, moving to open the door to the stands.

Levi skated over, still breathing heavily when he took a seat on a bench and leaned his back against the wall.

“I fucked up the step sequence,” he huffed, shaking his head. “I did three turns instead of a bracket.”

“In which part?” Erwin asked, trying to remember – but it had all been so beautiful.

“The second step sequence,” Levi told him, cleaning the blades of his skates. “I kept thinking about that Lutz, I wasn’t focusing.”

“You’ll get there,” Erwin comforted him, taking a seat on his right. “From where I was standing you looked just about ready.”

Levi glanced at him but didn’t speak, his mouth pressing into a tight line. He didn’t like it being mentioned – or, Erwin guessed, liked it a little too much.

“You didn’t try the quad axel this time.”

Levi’s hands paused on the blades and he looked up, apologetic.

“I just thought…” he started, pausing to bite his lip. “I mean, why risk getting my body all fucked up now. You know?”

Erwin smiled.

“Good,” he said; finally Levi had grasped it. “Listen to your body. Trust it. There’s no better guide than your intuition.”

Levi nodded; the rare smile on his lips made Erwin’s head spin.


End file.
